Conversation Analysis - A Powerful Tool PDF

Language and Psychoanalysis
ISSN 2049-324X
Volume 2, Issue 2, 2013

Editors
Laura A. Cariola, Lancaster University, UK
Andrew Wilson, Lancaster University, UK
Editorial Advisory Board
Prof. Michael Buchholz, International Psychoanalytic University Berlin, Germany
Prof. Adrienne Harris, New York University, USA
Prof. Dianne Hunter, Trinity College, USA
Prof. Horst Kächele, International Psychoanalytic University Berlin, Germany
Prof. Henry (Zvi) Lothane, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, US
Prof. Ian Parker, Discourse Unit, UK
Prof. Riccardo Steiner, British Psychoanalytic Society, UK
Prof. Carlo Strenger, Tel Aviv University, Israel
Prof. Ruth Wodak, Lancaster University, UK
Editorial Contact Address:
Department of Linguistics and English Language
Lancaster University
Lancaster LA1 4YT
United Kingdom
Fax: +44-1524-843085
E-mail: a.wilson@lancaster.ac.uk and l.cariola@lancaster.ac.uk

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Contents
Michael B. Buchholz, PhD. & Horst Kächele, PhD.

Conversation Analysis – A Powerful Tool for Psychoanalytic Practice and 4-30
Psychotherapy Research
Jean-Marc Dewaele, PhD. & Beverely Costa, Phd.

Multilingual Clients’ Experience of Psychotherapy 31-50
Khafiz Kerimov
Transience and Lack of Being 51-63
Zachary Tavlin, MA
Signifying Truth: Augustine, Lacan, and a Theory of Language 64-76
Giuseppe Iurato, MA
Σύµβολου: An Attempt toward the early Origins, Part 1 77-120
Giuseppe Iurato, MA
Σύµβολου: An Attempt toward the early Origins, Part 2 121-160
Conversation Analysis – A Powerful Tool for
Psychoanalytic Practice and Psychotherapy Research
Michael B. Buchholz & Horst Kächele1
Abstract
Psychoanalysis does not have an easy stand in documenting what “clinical facts” are.
This paper proposes to use an established research tool such as Conversation Analysis
(CA) in order to analyze how psychoanalytic conversation is performed in the consulting
room. The vicinity of CA-approaches and psychoanalytic intuitions is documented by
selected examples. We provide an outline of CA-research in psychoanalysis. Finally we
debate whether psychoanalysis be science or hermeneutics; these positions are seen as
two sides of a coin. One side is always in the dark. Metaphorically speaking, the future
will have the task to bring this coin to an upright stand which can be managed only when
the coin is given a thrilling turn by acknowledging that both, hermeneutics and science, in
far reaching dimensions ignored the (micro-)social dimension of the psychoanalytic
endeavor: conversation, talk-in-interaction. This will help to more clearly get in view
what “clinical facts” are.
Introduction
In recent years many efforts were undertaken to understand what psychoanalysis is and
what psychoanalysts do. For former generations it sufficed to define psychoanalysis as
the science created by Freud. What psychoanalysts do could be described by the word
“interpretation”. Several developments darkened this idyllic picture:
1. Many studies conducted by experienced psychoanalytic psychotherapy researchers
(see for an overview Bachrach et al,. 1991) tried to demonstrate systematic differences
between “psychoanalysis proper” and “psychodynamic psychotherapy”. This difference
could not convincingly be established (Sandell, 2012). In high frequency psychoanalyses
not only interpretations were used but analysts also provided advice and emotional
support (Bush & Meehan 2011); in once-a-week psychodynamic psychotherapies also
unconscious material was interpreted in addition to advice and social support.
1 Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Prof. Michael Buchholz 
and Prof. Horst Kächele, International Psychoanalytic University (IPU), Stromstr. 2‐3. 
10555 Berlin/FRG, Germany.  
E‐mail: michael.buchholz@ipu‐berlin.de, horst.kaechele@ipu‐berlin.de 
 
 
 
 
Language and Psychoanalysis, 2013, 2 (2), 4-30 4
http://dx.doi.org/10.7565/landp.2013.0004
2. To define the “common ground” of the multitude of psychoanalytic schools turned out
to be increasingly difficult. The Rome Conference papers profoundly demonstrated that
every author - pretending to know what the “common ground” was - just figured out his
personal position. Titles were “Common ground: The centrality of the oedipus complex”
(Feldman 1990), “The search for the common ground” (Schafer, 1990), “Empathy. A
common ground” (Feiner et al., 1994), “Countertransference: The emerging common
ground” (Gabbard, 1995), “The illusion of common ground” (Green 2005), and, finally,
ironic titles like “Common (under)ground of psychoanalysis: The question of a
Weltanschauung revisited” (Figueira, 1990).
3. David Tuckett (1993) pointed out that there is even no agreement what “clinical facts”
are; “facts” appear in the horizon of a given theory. Therefore Tuckett lamented of having
Winnicottian, Kohutian, Bionian, Kleinian and classical facts and today one could add a
lot more, e.g., Bollasian or interpersonal/relational “facts”.
4. Studying psychoanalysts-at-work (Tuckett, 2012) allows to regain the domain of
conversation. This rediscovery will open the door to a world of a rich caleidoscopic
shimmer in all colours of the human rainbow.
For example an EPF working group identified 6 types of interventions psychoanalysts

have described (Tuckett et al., 2008, p. 140):
1. Maintaining the basic setting
2. Adding an element to facilitate unconscious process
3. Questions, clarifications, reformulations, aimed at making matters conscious
4. Designating here and now emotional and phantasy meaning of the situation with
the analyst
5. Constructions directed at providing elaborated meaning
6. Sudden and apparently glaring reactions not easy to relate to a certain analyst’s
normal method
This group recommends shifting attention more on what the analyst does. Such a
comparison of what psychoanalysts do, what kind of inter-action psychoanalysis is comes
in view. Such a comparative approach unavoidably discovers how different analysts work
– beyond every idealistic description and self-description. Dana Birksted-Breen warns
about the risks of this endeavor:
The novelty of this comparative method lies in a dual shift in perspective: from the
patient to the analyst and from emphasizing a single ‘truth’ to valuing difference.
Instead of the traditional discussion of a ‘case’ in which the leader and participants
suggest a better or deeper understanding of the clinical material, there is a radical shift
of focus towards understanding the analyst herself, what she is doing in the
psychoanalytic encounter, and for what reason. The attempt to elucidate the implicit
model of the presenter/analyst shifts attention away from evaluation and towards
understanding (Tuckett et al., 2008, p. 2)

Having presented a clinical report the German analyst Helmut Hinz echoes in the same
direction: “To recognize difference is the beginning of recognizing the richness of the
universe of reality” (Hinz, in Tuckett et al., 2008, p. 109).
What psychoanalysis is begins to be defined in terms of what psychoanalysts do. To

apply CA-methods to psychoanalysis endorses that line of thinking. CA contributes to
precisely describe how it is done. This seems to be a remedy for this confusing situation
and it is in good psychoanalytic tradition. Anna O. termed what Breuer and she had done
together as “talking cure”. Today, this valuable metaphor is much more to the point than
ever. In psychoanalysis no “variables” are “applied”; simply two people talk together
although in a quite specific way. When directing attention to conversation we have a
chance to catch sight of what “clinical facts” are.
The aim of our paper is to inform about some of the research results and outline further
possibilities. This seems politically important. Influential parties in evidence-based
medicine have constructed manuals instead of old fashioned textbooks of therapy in
which a therapist is someone producing preformulated text blocks with respect to
diagnoses. Psychotherapy in general is in danger to be reduced to something like a trivial
machine without own reflection. Against this trend it might be important that
psychoanalysts remind psychotherapy in general as a highly specialized and creative
form of dialogue and directing research to analyze the special ingredients of
psychoanalytic conversation as opposed to other therapies.
Conversation – A core concept

The formula of “talking cure” opens sight for the core questions of psychotherapy
research: What are the qualities of a “healing conversation” (Symington, 2006)? What are
the details? How to describe conversational practices with the aim of “healing”? And:
How come that conversation influences cognition? If we glance into the consulting rooms
of therapeutic neighbors like music therapy or art therapy or even cognitive behavior
therapy we are endowed with a superior argument: more than 90 percent of activities
there are not the special ingredients which a given therapeutic school proclaims to be
effective. No, it’s just - talking! And, of course, at the same time psychoanalysts could
stick to the claim “Not Just Talking” (Pain, 2009); conversation analysts see this as the
gift to therapy and they did begin to analyze “Talk as therapy” (Pawelczyk, 2011). In this
seeming contradiction of “Just talking” vs. “Not just Talking” we see how psychoanalysis
is formed by a central paradox: Therapy = Talk and Therapy ≠ Talk. Both equations are
valid at the same time. Psychoanalytic patients and their analysts do talk and, according
to Freuds (1917) didactic formula nothing happens but an “exchange of words”. Yet, still
more happens. As “talking cure” psychoanalysis operates in a medium which transcends
the logic of secondary process thinking, it comes close to primary process thinking where
these logical contradictions are tolerated and creatively processed. But how is it done?
And the question then arises as to the difference between psychoanalysis and other
therapies?
To prefer “talking cure” over “chimney sweeping” - the other term Anna O. unforgettably
coined for her psychoanalytic experience - has good reasons. Talking is the most neutral
description for what happens in a treatment room; although, of course, not every talk is
treatment or psychoanalysis. Of course, Freud did not exclude gesture and tears, mimic

and prosody, nor pause and silence. Explaining (Freud, 1926) how to introduce the basic
rule he used the term “conversation”. In such a conversation it happens that certain kinds
of experience are condensed in a metaphor like “chimney sweeping”. Others, often heard,
are e.g., “diving deeply” or the (religious) metaphor of “confession” and many others.
Anna O’s “chimney sweeping” was later replaced by Freud by “purification”.
These metaphors encompass a smaller or greater part of conversation. They never contain
all aspects. Metaphors for conversation become part of conversation when they are
occasionally used as frames for the ongoing conversation. As such they are part of
conversation and, at the same time, create a reflective stance for conversation. Thus,
conversation or “talking” is the superior concept one has to begin with.
Why not speak of communication, but of Conversation?

Early communication research used a technological model where one speaker is
analogized with a transmitter, sending a coded message to a receiver who has to decode
the message (Krippendorf, 1969). This technological provides an instruction for learning
“communicative behavior”, to teach people to “say what you really mean”. It is widely
used in mass communication, social psychology of groups and in many other areas like
coaching, communication trainings etc.
The technological model ignores many highly relevant dimensions of human affairs
(Peräkylä, 2004). One of them is that a listener pays attention to a speaker! What might
be the reason for this active contribution by the listener? Before he knows that a
“message” is to be “decoded” the listener listens! How is it done that they don’t start
talking together at the same moment? One must simply remember that babies do this and
one without further instruction grasps that there must be a history in it. And more: A
listener pushes back of his mind any irrelevant “noise”. Before he can “decode” he has to
differentiate the “noise” from the rest. This active participation of the listener is
completely overlooked in the technological model, but it is highly relevant for
conversation. Participants in conversation have an implicit knowledge of this dimension.
One can observe how speakers end their contribution with what CA-researchers call a
“tag”, a little sound like “eh!”, in German some use “gell”, in Switzerland “o:dr”
(“oder?”) is used; in British conversation one encounters “isn’t it?”. Obviously these
activities are directed to activate the listeners attention and in some cases to provoke the
listener to give a prosodic sound that he still listens: “hm:m”. Another problem is how a
listener might be sure to have “decoded the message correctly”? He cannot have a
measure for correct translation before the beginning – which would be required in the
technological model. Otherwise a “decoding” of the message would not work.
In conversational activities there is more than the conveyance of information. The

technological model is a “folk theory” of talking. Reddy (1979) termed it the “Conduit
metaphor”. Conversation is more. It consists of, at least, three components that have to be
identified from the outset: A listener has to differentiate being addressed from the content
and he has to use this difference in order to produce understanding. This is the full circle.
Conversation does not happen from one to the other (this might be the case in military
commands), it demands active participation on both sides.

Conceptual obstacles of a technological model are easily to overcome if we do speak of
“conversation” in a tradition that goes back to Wittgenstein. Language is less a
transporter system for “information” but a form of human practice. Thus, CA-researchers
reject a technological blueprint for human and naturalistic affairs as it denies the sociable,
gregarious dimension, the convivial element in conversation. Originally, conversation
was not a scientific concept. It was meant for the coming together, for the social
gathering of well educated people in a friendly manner. The place where they met was
the salon (Miller, 2006, p. 71) like the salon of Rachel Varnhagen in Berlin or the
Ephrussi family’s salon in Paris or those in St. Petersburg or Moscow so marvelously
described by Tolstoj. What these people did was called “doing conversation”. Their
conversation followed certain rules all designed to support one aim: conversation should
not stop, it should go on. Thus, tone had to avoid themes like religion or politics which
might result in quarrels or serious controversies. Topics should be changed before it came
to a decision because a decision in a question of relevance might someone feel excluded.
Exclusion was considered a serious violation of conversational rules. Another rule was to
care for the inclusion of everyone, even women. Those who were not excluded where
considered members in conversational participation. Persons excluded should be re-
“membered” into the conversational circle. So they could be re-”minded”. Etymology
reflects the idea that to be re-minded meant to become healthy again by being re-
membered, by being re-included in the community.
In contrast, a scientific conversation had completely different aims. Scientific questions

urge to be answered, they have a penchant for closure in order to turn oneself to other
questions. If you want to know if an answer is “true” or “false” you have to debate it to
the end, you cannot change topics or consider about someone being excluded. From this
double origin of conversation the famous Freudian inseparable bond of “cure and
research” herited (1927a, p. 256). His formulation includes both in order to make
perceptible by scientifically guided self-reflection the healing effects of conversation.
Healing is effected by re-including.
Freud´s use of the term “conversation” displays several connotations. To analyze

conversation and to analyze a “psyche” has a huge semantic overlap of meaning;
everything you can analyze must come through the narrow passage of conversation,
including all elusive phenomena as slips of the tongue, a glance, a gesture or a curious
word used. Everything that can be heard and seen can become part of conversation
analysis. Affect displays are included in this conception of conversation (Krause &
Merten, 1999). Or vice versa: if it is not heard nor seen it cannot be noticed and then, not
analyzed until it appears on the common screen of conversation.
Psychoanalysts are interested in certain topics in their patients’ life which they think are
repressed and refrain from appearing on the conversational screen. So we have a first (not
the first) description of what analysts sometimes do: they actualize hidden dimensions
excluded from conversation (Smith, 1991). They do this actualization in the medium of –
conversation and cannot avoid this paradox. It follows, that even interpretations are
embedded in conversation; they are part of conversational history. Much can be said to
further analyze the How, When and Why of different kinds of actualizing activities. But
for the moment we want to turn to another line of thinking.

The Origins of CA
Conversation analysis is the name for a research practice deriving from several traditions
in sociology and sociolinguistics. It was Erving Goffman (1964, 1983) who directed
attention to the phenomena of everyday verbal and nonverbal exchange between
participants in interaction. He considered the difference between backstage and front
stage in a very similar way as psychoanalysts, he saw how important “frames” of
interaction are and could make plausible that these frames guide institutional
conversation in a way perceptible for everyone, but largely ignored. In families,
preschoolers are sometimes asked “Paul, do you know how much is two and two?” At
school, then, the format of the question is changed: “How much is two and two – Paul?”
The personal reference changes its place from the first utterance to the last. This format
communicates meaning which is not in the words. It fits to classroom conversation
(Gardner, 2013) which is different from family intimacy. Harold Garfinkel, another social
scientist and founder of what he called “ethno-methodology” worked at similar problems
and found that every subcultural ethnic community uses “methods” how they organize
their conversations in order to make sure that there is “order at every point”. Even in
excited quarrels one can find “orderliness”, but in times before Garfinkel (1967) neither
participants nor observers could see it.
It was Harvey Sacks (1978, 1980), a gifted young student of conversation, who coined
the term of conversation analysis (CA). His lectures were later published by Gail
Jefferson (1992); Sacks untimely died in an accident in 1975. Gail Jefferson and Emanuel
A. Schegloff belong to the first who understood the enormous relevance of studying the
details of conversation in everyday talk, in institutions as patient-doctor interactions, in
classrooms or at court, and influenced others to pay special attention to the details of
conversation among children. In all these different institutional places it could be shown
how conversational routines as questions and answers, referencing to present or absent
persons or practices like storytelling make influential differences. Even the expression of
emotion, the regulation of affiliation, the production of laughter or gaze direction was
analyzed and it could be demonstrated that in conversation not only words are exchanged
but bodies participate in a way confirming the basic premise of “order at every
point”. Jefferson (1984 a and b) could demonstrate this orderliness in such emotional
moving interactions as “trouble talk” or, more positive, in how laughter is “organized”.
Others have felt touched by the potential of CA to analyze psychotherapeutic processes in
general more broadly. Madill et al. (2001) defined CA as “the study of talk in interaction
and of how, through talk, people accomplish actions and make sense of the world around
them” (p. 414). Forrester and Reason (2006) admit that CA might be “an exercise of
disciplinary demystification” (p. 44) but they cannot see how CA deals with the
“ontological status of the unconscious” (p. 53). Both papers focus on sequence
organization of therapeutic talk and hope to gain a more detailed view of therapeutic
practices.
There is still the other line of thinking in CA, the analysis of category bound activities
(Lepper, 2000; Sacks, 1980; Schegloff, 2007). Let’s have a short look at the case
illustration used by Forrester and Reason (2006, p. 53). The patient has reported a dream.
They, as observers, see “from a psychoanalytic-psychotherapeutic perspective”, that “the
client offers the therapist a gift” (p. 48).
To interprete a dream(-telling) as a “gift” constructs a metaphorical equation – by

observers. Nothing is shown how participants, therapist and client, treat this episode. To

criticize the therapist for not acknowledging the dream as a gift might be relevant from a
clinical point of view. Clinical thinking is full of constructing metaphors of this kind.
This is, what clinicians helpful do, it is one of the practices often used in doing
psychoanalysis.
CA analyzes such practice as category activity. How do participants create and introduce
into conversation new categories such as metaphors (or others) used to self-describe what
they are just talking about? Are there relevant places where such categorical
constructions can be introduced? Which conversational problem of the participants is
solved when one of them does this? How come that Anna O. suddenly used the metaphor
of “talking cure” for the kind of conversation she had with Joseph Breuer? Metaphors are
powerful conversational tools to condense conversational experience of both participants
and sometimes they create a new level of reflection, sometimes they fail and next
speakers refuse them or do not agree. Here is a chance to integrate metaphor analysis
(Ahrens, 2012; Angus, 1996; Buchholz, 2007; Cameron & Maslen, 2010; Carveth, 1984;
Quinn, 2010) and CA.
A link between conversation and cognition (Molder & Potter, 2005) can be drawn.
Leading cognitive linguist George Lakoff (1987) used “What categories reveal about the
mind” as subtitle for his famous book and he drew on categories of very different kinds,
logical and, of course, metaphorical. We have analyzed these links methodologically
(Buchholz 2006) and used them empirically in our research about sexual offenders
(Buchholz, Lamott & Mörtl, 2008; Mörtl et al., 2010). In our view, it is not that CA
overlooks the “ontological status” of the unconscious; CA enriches psychoanalytic
conceptions of the unconscious by focusing on other activities (sequences and categories)
more than traditional conceptions of the unconscious do.
Participants unconsciously use tacit skills for three purposes:
a) to orient their contribution to a common activity focus (“What are we doing here
together?”) – in conversation is a capability for cooperation. In the future one
could describe the special kinds of cooperation patients display or refuse.
b) to commonly organize – without conscious planning – their turn-by-turn
organization; they “know” certain formats of talk, e.g., when a storyteller makes a
pause but wants to continue or, alternatively, the listener may take the turn and
pose a question; they “know” when it is interdicted to tell a joke (Sacks, 1978) or
how to gossip (Bergmann, 1987) and violate moral rules of conduct (Hakulinen &
Sorjonen, 2011; Bergmann, 1999; Pomerantz, 2012). This kind of tacit knowledge
contributes to the overall organization of talking, in psychoanalytic observation it
is widely ignored. Common organization means that there is a sense of sharing
something together.
c) to further process their common conversational tasks and aims embedded in a
context of interactional organization. For example, when you hear a “thank you”
you follow the rules of polite complementarity, e.g., “you are welcome”, “my
pleasure” etc.). But therapists, when they hear at the end of an interview a “thank
you” while shaking hands don’t respond this way. Therapists nod with their heads
and keep silent sticking to their professional attitudes documenting that the
interview was not an everyday kind of talk. Therapists use small violations of an
everday-rule-of-conduct as professional markers for demonstrating the difference
between everyday-types of conversation and the consulting room. This is an
example for a general human sense of using self-produced context to produce a
surplus of meaning (McHoul et al., 2008).

In recent years a Finnish conversation analyst, Anssi Peräkylä, trained as a psychoanalyst,
began to research psychoanalytic conversation. Psychoanalysis is talking, but, of course,
not every talk is psychoanalysis (Peräkylä et al., 2008). So what details make the
difference? To find this out is one aim of CA-research in psychoanalysis. It will result in
a variety of knowledge of how psychoanalysts talk. Thus, CA-research is a powerful tool
to contribute to important psychoanalytic questions, e.g., what clinical facts are. If you go
back in the history to CA-research activities one is surprised to find how close this comes
to psychoanalytic interests. This closeness has several dimensions:
a) The kind of data is not numbers, but talk-in-action (Heritage & Clayman, 2010)
b) The mode of careful observation is not global (“overall diagnosis” as in DSM or
ICD) but directed to the details
c) Conclusions go from gathering the details to the more global conceptions, or, as
William Blake once said: “There is a world in every grain of sand”.
Here are some examples to exemplify this closeness between CA-research and
psychoanalysis.
Small Examples
These examples are not taken from the consultation room. They are a selection of early
CA-research in order to show how these researchers are engaged in topics which Freud
paid careful attention to. They are elusive phenomena, often overlooked. Jefferson in
1996 published an article “On the Poetics of Ordinary Talk” which led her close to
Freudian positions. She started with an observation: The poet’s job is it to arrange sounds
and categories. She provided a few examples and then went further to a clinical question:
“What is the difference between what the psychotic does and what the poet does?” (p. 4)
She gathered examples of Freudian slips. Here are three of them:
a) A record from the US-Crandall Show where the host is reading out a commercial for
suits named “Bond’ Blue Chips”. His exact wording but was:
“˜B[ig, [be)eautiful] from America’s [l]argest [cl[othier. [B)oh- Bond’s. Blondes, my
goodness. Wuh that’s a Freudian Slip” (quoted from Jefferson, 1996, p. 6)
Jefferson sees the double sound-row of the letters b and l and comments there is
“something moving towards ‘blonds boo’”. This is a classical Freudian interpretation
based on an exact analysis of what the speaker said. Freud saw a slip of the tongue
composed of a conscious intention to say something interfering with another unconscious
intention to say something different. The condition for the slip is this combination of
conscious and unconscious intentions.
Here is a second example from Jefferson:

b) A plane made a rough landing and the stewardess a few seconds later announces:
Stew: On behalf of the who(l)e f(r)ight - f(l)ight c(r)ew I’d like to thank you for flying
Air California (p. 7)

And Jefferson comments like a Freudian analyst using her countertransference: “‘Fright’,
and how! Freudian Slips! Lots of nudging and grinning among us passengers. But then I
thought, no, it’s one of those sound-selection things. As with dreep drop, blonds boo,
flight foyed, here we are on the way to ‘fright cloo’” (p. 7)
c) Jefferson informs about another type of slip based on category-formed errors. An
example is when a male speaker, Larry, says:
“Hi. I’m Carol’s sister - uh brother” (p. 10)
This example is one of “categorization”: one’s self is wrongly categorized – and then
corrected. Examples of this kind are well known in psychoanalysis. We mention them to
counteract the prejudice that CA is anti-mentalistic or simply behaviorally oriented. CA is
engaged in similar topics as psychoanalysis. If Freud had had the technology of audio-
and video recording he would have used it with respect to his patients’ needs for
anonymity. As in his days this technology was not available he had no other possibility
than to ensure his readers that he had a “phonographic memory” as in the introduction to
his 1916-17 “Introductory Lessons” (Freud, 1916-17).
Senses and Embodiment

The astonishing equivalence between CA and psychoanalysis goes further. CA analyzes
talk in a manner including the body and senses and with an excellent attention to the
details. Details are elusive and cannot be reproduced nor experimentally manipulated, but
they are those hearable and viewable elements in the Freudian tradition that are
considered able to show that there is unconscious activity. Schegloff (2007) explains his
interest in how people acknowledge each other with a personal anecdote and an important
observation:
I often find myself walking on campus and encountering someone coming the other
way who was an undergraduate student in my class. And we have this odd game of
not-quite-mutual gaze. They look at me half expectantly, and as my eyes start coming
to them they look away, figuring that there is no way I would recognize them as they
recognize me, and to be caught looking at me like that would be . . . what? Intrusive?
Presumptuous? Mocking? And if the pas de deux goes their way, we pass each other
without ever meeting one another’s gaze and with no mutual acknowledgement; and if
it goes my way, I trap them, and recognize them – sometimes by name which blows
their mind – and we greet each other, and it’s very nice. This is the way the logic plays
out when the very issue is whether there is to be any interaction at all in the first place.

On the telephone, the parties are already in the interaction, so it plays out a
bit differently, but the same logic is involved. I know him, but does he know me? and
does he know that I know him? and does he know that I know that he knows me?
(Schegloff, 2007, pp. 132-133).
This inclusion of personal experience follows Freud in showing how his personal
experience “from everyday” steered his scientific interests deeply. Important here that the
interpersonal “logic” of this “pas de deux” plays out in another area: On the telephone
when people have no visual contact to each other! Here are some of Schegloff’s
examples:
Example (6) TG, 1 (Schegloff, 1979: #42)

1 ((ring))
2 Ava: H’llo:?
3 Bea: –> hHi:,
4 Ava: Hi:?
Example (7) NB, #114 (Schegloff, 1979: #44)
5 ((ring))
6 Cla: Hello::,
7 Agn: –> Hi:::,
8 Cla: Oh: hi:: ‘ow are you Agne::s,
Example (8) HG 2
9 1 ((ring))
10 2 Nan: H’llo::?
11 3 Hyl: –> Hi:,
12 4 Nan: HI::.” (Schegloff, 2007, p. 133)
These examples clearly demonstrate the same pattern of “pas de deux” on telephone
calls as when meeting on the university campus. From the senses of seeing to the
sense we encounter the same transmodal pattern.
Schegloff explains:

In their first turn, callers do a greeting that in the first instance claims to have
recognized the answerer as the person they meant to reach, and which also provides a
voice sample to the answerer from which callers, in effect, propose and require that the
answerer recognize them. In these three instances, it is about as small a voice sample
as it could be; some callers are a bit more generous and say ‘hello’, providing the
answerer with two syllables from which to recognize. In these three instances, and in a
great many more, it works. With no hearable delay, answerers return the greeting in
the next turn, which serves not only to reciprocate the greeting, but to claim that
answerers have reciprocated the recognition as well. The operative word here is
‘claim’; in Example (7) Clara shows that she has recognized the caller (her sister) by
addressing her by name; in Example (6) and (8), no such demonstration is provided.
(p. 133)
These examples display interesting dimensions of CA-research for psychoanalytic topics

and theorizing. Freud’s programmatic declaration that the essential part of the Ego is the
body today is worked through in other fields under the heading of “embodiment” research
(Pfeifer & Leuzinger-Bohleber, 1986). From Schegloff’s fresh analysis one can get an
impression of how this sensual “transference” from “seeing-each-other” to “calling-each-
other” might work. The same pattern of “pas de deux” is executed and it is this kind of
pattern we look for in psychoanalytic practice.
We mention just one example (Emde, 1988) here from the rich body of evidence in infant
research. The baby is given into his open mouth a nubbly dummy without the possibility
to see it before. The baby feels the dummy is different. After the dummy is removed the
baby sees several pictures of dummies on a screen. The baby stares longest when it sees
the picture of a nubbly dummy. She makes a kind of “conclusion” from one sensual
experience to the other, from the mouth to visual perception. This mental “gestalt”
(Bernfeld 1934) confirms what Freud had in mind when he spoke of “transference” in his
first versions – from one sensual modality to another. Or, in Schegloff’s example, from
one encounter on a University Campus to another when starting a telephone call. Or, as
Emde (1988) formulated, from relationships to “relationships on relationships”. Infant
researchers show in this kind of experimenting an observation and the baby’s “method”
to proceed from the observable to the unobservable. We see how mind comes into sensual
experience, works in sensual transference and then up to relationships on relationships.
Nobody would conclude that Schegloff’s observation of “pas de deux” in gaze-to-gaze-

movement and then in acoustic verbal exchanges while starting a telephone call would be

“regressive” and “baby-like”. No, one can learn that these processes are elementary and
constitutive for the beginning of new interactions.
Resistance in Conversation
There is an important debate what basic psychoanalytical concepts mean. Spurling
(2008), in reviewing some famous case histories asks himself why he in his consulting
room does not encounter the phenomenon of “regression” which is to appear regularly
according to authors like Winnicott he re-reads? He concludes that in regression there is
much contribution from the therapist’s side. At the same conclusion arrive other
psychoanalyst (Minolli, 2004; Rousillion, 2010; Wainrib, 2012), when reconsidering the
phenomena of narcissism. Kächele et al. (2009) insist that psychoanalytic concepts have
value only when they can be precisely documented in conversational practice in the
consulting room. Convincingly they documented how by tape-recording of analytical
session complex levels of psychoanalytic treatment can contribute to theoretical debates.
Clinical facts can be documented when analysts give up their resistance against tape-
recording of sessions. There is a small, but growing body of CA-literature on resistance.
Gerhardt & Stinson (1995) have shown how ambivalently the concept of resistance can
be used as a basic operation for a patient’s striving for autonomy or as opposing a
method. Others (Fleisher Feldman, 1995; Caplan, 1995) have responded to this exposed
alternative but the conclusion was that there is no “objectivity” in defining resistance;
everything depends on the analyst’s emotional and epistemological position.
“Resistance” has been borrowed from psychoanalysis generating productive

conversational research in related fields as advice giving, e.g., in medical conversation,
genetic counseling, telephone help services and the like. How do professionals in these
areas deal with resistance? Hepburn and Potter (2011) describe three practices:
a) Resisted advice is packed in a more idiomatic form
b) Sometimes a “tag” is added so that the listeners is defined as someone who
already knows the relevant version
c) The counselor dampens down the requirement for a response by “continuing past
the transition place” (p. 217).
To give advice has a normative dimension and it is asymmetric. The advice giver defines
himself as someone who claims to know how things are done “right”. These interactional
dimensions are handled by the three practices described. The difference to the
psychoanalytic notion of resistance is not huge. To overcome resistance also in
psychoanalysis means to make the patient accept the momentary asymmetry and to
accept that the analyst might be “right” – and the analyst tries to balance this asymmetry
by verbal activities of the kind described. Resistance can be aggravated by the
conversation format of how a patient’s problem is formulated (Morris, 2005). In
question-driven therapies resistance is aggravated by this kind of conducting therapy
(MacMartin, 2008). Patients find covert modes to resist advice while they openly consent.
Hepburn and Potter (2011, p. 221) describe an “endemic epistemic asymmetry” – the
advice giver in telephone emergency calls never has a full picture and the caller can
withdrew to informations not yet or never given. The advice giver never gains control
whether his advice is followed or not. This might operate in psychoanalytic
conversations, too. Vehviläinen (2008), contributing with the first article on CA about
resistance in psychoanalysis, describes the “interpretative trajectory”:

The analyst does preparatory work to create the relevance, and an interactional ‘slot’,
for the interpretation, thereby co-constructing it with the client. Connections and
contradictions in the associated materials, pointed by the analyst, provide puzzles:
noteworthy, enigmatic issues calling for exploration and explanation. In a stepwise
manner, the analyst treats some aspects of the client’s talk as worth exploring. The
interpretative statements that typically follow attend to these puzzles, providing
explanations. They draw on the materials the client has provided, but reorganize them
or add something new. This is, then, the core interactional practice of showing the
client something that she or he ‘has not been aware of’… (pp. 121-122)
This trajectory is not a theoretical description but substantiated by a series of transcribed

data. Thus we have two basic operative procedures in dealing with resistance: First, the
analyst uses the client’s material but arranges it in a new way. Second, the analyst adds
something new, a new perspective or a new combination with other materials the client
had delivered in earlier moments. We propose to term these practices under the headline
of “changing the frame”-procedures with a notable aspect: the new frame has to be made
relevant for the client in order to be accepted. Here, Vehviläinen is right in speaking of
analysts solving puzzles. Vehviläinen (p. 137) points out that the analyst’s task to figure
out the puzzles in a client’s talk must provoke “trouble”, attempts to justify oneself, to
rationalize or to defend oneself in other manners. These practices show how
psychoanalysis makes clients accountable for actions where accountability has been
denied. This involves risky aspects of being blamed. But, of course, it is inavoidable. So,
how this is done becomes a question of enormous practical relevance. We are at the
beginning here. Freud was right, when he saw a cornerstone of psychoanalysis in the
concept of resistance and claiming that the whole psychoanalytic theory is built on this
concept.
From today’s point of view it might be worth considering that theory is a necessary
protective resource for this special kind of conversation psychoanalysts try to conduct
every day. In his 6-days-a-week practice Freud (1913, p. 460) observed what he called
the “Monday crust”, the patient reappearing a little bit hardened as compared to the
Saturday session. But the humorous metaphor of “Monday crust” clearly is more than an
observation. It serves as a means to continue with a practice Freud called in other
writings as an “impossible profession”.
Talk in Professional Psychoanalytic Practice

We hear and see what can be heard and seen and listened to and in everyday interaction
we turn our attention away from things which co-interactants commonly exclude – these
things are “categorized” as “not-relevant to what-is-going-on”. In contrast, as

psychoanalysts we try to re-mind what has been excluded from conversation, we pay
special attention to what was made strange and try to re-member these elements. We
strive to catch for the invisible – but we can catch it only when we are attentive to what is
simply “documented” in what can be heard and seen. The “behavioral” dimension of
conversation is just the access to the so important invisible dimension which we term the
Unconscious. Here CA-research and psychoanalytic intuitions converge. In this
paragraph we follow the work of Peräkylä for some convincing demonstrations.
Traditional domains of CA are medical communication, in court, in classrooms –

summarized as “institutional communication”. In institutions of that kind on can find
conversational routines which make deviances meaningful. Obviously, psychotherapeutic
communication cannot be subsumed under the headline of “institutional conversation” in
general. The variations from analytic dyad to analytic dyad are immense.
But, there are of course routine parts as e.g., the way how to end a session. Most analysts
use a standard formula like “Our time is over” or the like to end a session. In this standard
routine lies a chance for deviance. When there was a touching session with tears or
otherwise emotionally moving so that analyst and patient share a common experience
sensitive analysts end a session in deviance from the standard formula. This deviance
then is uploaded with an unsaid meaning as the patient can “co-read” the analyst’s being
emotionally moved and his sharing of emotional experience during the session – but the
analyst must not explicitly “inform” his patient about his participation. Sensitive analysts
do this because intuitively they feel that to use a standard routine of “good bye” can be
“heard as” a kind of cold neutrality. In anticipation of this possibly hurting “being heard
as” the good-bye formula is changed. And, as it were, incidentally let the patient
participate for a moment of the own emotional state. Without saying or telling, nor
talking nor informing, it is no “communication”. It just violates a standard routine.
Psychoanalytic conversation might be found in this “intermediate” region where
something is “said” and “not said” in the same move. Everyday logic cannot think this
“at the same time”. In everyday logic A=A and not A≠B. But in our conversations
sometimes it happens that we meet another logic which comes close to what Freud (1900)
in “The Interpretation of Dreams” had termed the primary process. The new discovery is
that these characteristics of primary process appear not beyond or “behind” the
conversational surface. They appear on the surface and we can direct our attention to
them.
When analyzing the use of metaphors in psychoanalytic dialogue (Buchholz, 1996) there
is a similar observation. Metaphors operate on the base that A=B and A≠B. “His mind is
a mill” means, of course, that his mind is not a mill. Stählin (1914) showed in order to
understand the meaning of a metaphor it is important to develop a “consciousness of
double meaning”. If one hears the sentence “He is gone crazy of love for her” and you
expect to find the man in a psychiatric ward you have not understood the metaphor. To
understand metaphors means to renounce the sentence of excluded third. Metaphors show
that there is an excluded “Third” between formal structured logic. Metaphors (Ogden,
1997; Borbely, 2008; Cacciari, 2008; Aragno, 2009; Buchholz, 1993) demonstrate this
primary process logic on the surface of our talking. This kind of intuitively “catching”
emotional hints is observed by Peräkylä (2011) in other examples of psychoanalytic
conversation, too.
Peräkylä (2013, p. 552) critizices this “going beyond” of what is said and done.

While ordinarily in interaction, language and other signs are understood as means for
displaying and recognizing the speaker’s communicative intentions…, in
psychotherapy there is an endemic orientation in the therapist, and usually in the
patient, to examine the patient’s talk beyond its intended meanings.
Psychoanalysts’ practices can be described as using formulations. Formulations (Antaki,

2008) are utterances which indicate in what way a speaker came to understand what in
the other speaker’s turn has been said before. Using such formulations psychoanalysts do
not exactly reproduce the words the patient used. They give meaning by slightly shifting
utterances. They use turn-initial particles like “It seems as if you were …” or “It sounds
like…”. The practical implication of such formulations is that they sound like saying the
same and operate as “just-understanding”. But they do more. Vehviläinen (2003) sees
that in such formulations a new content is packed in making a different (unconscious?)
meaning for the hearer easier acceptable.
Psychoanalysts expand meanings by repeating a patient’s words and add additional

formulations: “You say this made you angry, but no feelings of being disappointed
before?” or they make utterances like “You say it is hard. I think you mean painful”. Rae
(2008) calls this a “lexical substitution” aiming to find the correct word for an emotional
state and its intensity.
Peräkylä (2011) made an interesting observation. The analyst’s formulation is spoken in a

“first position”, the patient’s response illustrates a move from a “second position”. When
analyzing the material of 58 audio-recorded sessions of psychoanalyses conducted by two
psychoanalysts with 3 patients Peräkylä (2011) finds that analysts modify slightly what
they have said in their first-position move. Sometimes they intensify the words for
emotional experience or they additionally point to layers of experience not addressed to
in the first-move-utterance before. These reformulations are not made explicitly with an
accent on “this is right now!”, rather they come in a way to open a discrete opportunity
for the patient to change how she understood the first interpretation given. Analysts
contribute to the process by respecting the patient’s autonomy and at the same time
intuitively demonstrate their adaptation to the patient’s response to the first interpretation
given. Can this kind of micro-analyzing clear the difference between therapy and other
forms of talk? The answer is yes and a short review can show this.
CA in Psychoanalytic therapy Research

One distinguishing feature is the amount questions from the therapist. Putting questions
to someone has a multitude of conversational dimension of which we mention here only
one: it responds to the silent question who holds the initiative? In question-answer
therapies the conversation stops if no questions are posed or this threat is permanently
present. In contrast, psychoanalysis has aimed to give the patient the power of initiative
and thus to pose the analyst in a listening position. After silencing of some length

therapists utter a “hm-hm”, obviously an attempt to bring themselves in a listener’s
position (see first example below, line 5).
Pittenger et al. (1960) in their research on “The First Five Minutes” established some
principles of therapeutic talk (“recurrence”, “immanent reference”, “adjustment” (p. 229-
244) which demonstrate the firm wish to empirically base their intuition of difference in
therapeutic talk on research data. Scheflen (1972) included in his analysis the bodily
movements of hands and gestures and positioning which synchronized with
conversational intent. His material was a detailed analysis of a family therapy session
which influenced family therapy research of authors like Wynne (1984). Labov and
Fanshel (1977) analyzed the first 15 minutes of session 25 observing four levels: a) the
elements of text including all pauses; b) the elements of paralinguistic cues (p. 42) with
which loudness, laughter, breath and rate was included; c) the level of “expansion” by
bringing together verbal and paralinguistic data together with elements of the situation; d)
the level of interaction by which participants identify their actions mutually. Their
methodological instrument was speech-act theory. They come to formulate 4 basic types
of conversational action: metacommunication, representation, request and challenge (p.
77-110). Turner (1976) directed his attention to the question when a session does begin?
What makes the difference between “informal” talk before the “official” work session
starts? His material were group therapy sessions and he finds that in the informal first
parts therapist omit those “second moves” to which they are urged after “official” session
parts had started. This distinction is a complicated matter in handling psychoanalytic
sessions. We have gathered three starts of psychoanalytic sessions from fully trained
psychoanalysts, examples which demonstrate how important it is to draw the line
between “informal” and “official” session. In all three examples one participant starts
talking with a special demand:
First example:
13 T (male): Mrs R., t’day (.) I would let my cell phone online and if i:t were
my family I wou::ld respond the call becau:z (..) my father is in the hospital
14 (1,5)
15 P (female): My stepgrandfather too. I mea::n Irene’s father. A:lso (.) came
today to the hospital
16 (3)
17 T: m:mh
18 (7)
19 T: How are you doing?

Second example:
20 P (male): well, at first uhm; next Tuesday (.) we could drop our session (-)
or shift it.(1) Be::cause (-) I would have to attend another meeting
21 ((P and T are laughing))
22 T (female): ä::uhm (1,5) ä::uhm we could shift it to Thursday
23 P: Yeah:: okay::uhm it should work (( stands up, walks to his bag and
takes his blackberry out))
24 T: this is the 25th.
25 P: also at seven pm or? That (.) sounds good (-) I ll put it down (-) to be on
the safe side (--) perfect!
26 (8)
27 ((P and T are laughing))
28 P: tzen I ll switch off (.) my machine(--) you really look good, relaxed
29 T: thanks. ((laughs))
30 P: sun burned ((laughs))
Third Example:
31 T (male): Uhm::hh (..) I have a small info first (..), uhm

32 (1)
33 P (male): Yes::
34 T: It will ring any moment (.) someone will deliver at the door (-) I ll first
have to open it
35 (.)
36 P: ((sighs))
37 T: that you (-) will be (.) prepared
38 P: ((sighs, loud inspiration,))
39 (60)
40 P: Yes: =I just had a nice experience and a surprise (reports a pleasurable
situation with his wife)
These examples have something in common and they are different. The three
psychoanalysts follow the technical rule to begin a session with information about a
change of the formal frame of the session if this should become necessary. These things

happen in psychoanalytic sessions and it is, following Tuckett, not necessary to deal with
it whether it is appropriate or not. CA has not the task to evaluate a procedure but to
describe the steps by which conversation is organized.
In the first example the therapist informs his client that he wants to learn what happens
with his father in a hospital and that the session might probably be interrupted. The
client’s answer is of a very ambivalent kind. Even after repeated careful listening to the
tape it was not possible if this is a response of rivalry-in-suffering (My stepgrandfather
too) or is it an utterance categorized as empathic with the analyst’s situation. The
ambivalence of how to categorize the client’s response makes the analyst (line 5) attempt
to bring himself into a listener’s position by uttering “m:mh” which produces no client’s
response but a continuation of silence. After seven seconds the analyst tries an everyday
start in order to overcome the line between the informal and the official part of the
session.
In the second example it is the client who wants to change the date of a session. With
“well, at first uhm” he informs the analyst about his drawing a line between the two parts
of the session, it is his categorizing activity. But here the analyst does not come to
participate in drawing that line. The common laughter (in line 2 and 8) is a co-production
of resistance against differentiating “informal” from “formal” parts of the session. The
last chance to differentiate these two parts of a session is lost after the internal pause (--)
in line 9. This is a turn-transition point, the client switches of his blackberry, informs the
analyst about this activity and ends with a pause. If the analyst does not take the turn here
this can be heard by the patient as a “silent continuer” - as if a “go on” is uttered. The
client goes on with informal talk and makes his comments about the after-holiday fashion
of his analyst. The analyst responds in a conventional everyday manner (“thanks”) and
instantiates the patients hearing that the line between informal talk and official work is
not yet established. This might further the patient’s courage to talk about his analyst or it
might lead to an aggravation of this kind of resistance.
The third example starts in a similar way like the first. The analyst does not have such a
justifying account as if he expects the session to become interrupted because of a father in
hospital. But he justifies his pre-session information in a similar fashion (line 7: “that you
(-) will be (.) prepared”). The patient moans several times, the therapist does not actively
try to restart conversation. After a “felt long” pause of 60 seconds it is the patient who
takes his initiative.
These examples might serve as an illustration as to how CA can help to clearly analyze
the enormous difficulties to cope with in psychoanalytic practice. It is not only
sequentiality of turn-taking, it is category-bound activity (to differentiate the informal
from the formal part of the session) as well as mutually reading intentions of both
participants (including unconscious intentions) that has to be skillfully managed in
professional practice. In psychoanalytic practice more happens than just “giving
interpretations”.
This early discovery originated from a project on “discursive structures in psychoanalytic

therapy” (Flader et al. 1982) showing special properties of psychoanalytic conversation:
a) a specialization of mental participation in dialogue; b) deviant participation structures
simply as to the amount of verbal activity by the therapist; c) therapists exhibit unusual
conversation practices in long silences and non-responding to questions; d) both

participants need time for establishing their special kind of cooperation; e) finally, the
question of asymmetric anonymity.
These authors used the concept of “defense” for explaining certain conversational
features instead of analyzing how this acts in conversation itself. One task they described
might be remembered because of its practical value: Patients at the beginning of
treatment have to be socialized into that special kind of conversation tolerating deviances
from everyday expectations as not answering, long pauses and the analyst’s attempt to
keep secure his anonymity. There is training in specialized conversational practices than
only gaining “insight”. A patient cannot, as in most conversational opportunities of other
kind, select the analyst as a next speaker. The patient might put a question to the analyst
and make the experience not to receive an answer. Spence et al. (1994), while
“monitoring the analytic surface” observed a related phenomenon. They were interested
in just one type of utterance when a patient directly addresses his analyst by sentences
like “I think of yesterday when you said…” This connection of “I” and “you” in close
approximation in one sentence can be easily detected. They find that there are sessions
with a lot of such sentences (“related hours”) and sessions without any (“isolated hours”).
The important conversational feature is: in “related hours” the analyst does not only
speak more, but earlier in the session.
The phenomenon once found it is not difficult to explain. When the analyst is directly
addressed this exerts a certain conversational pressure to respond. This kind of research
detects a phenomenon of how the analyst is steered by his patient’s utterance format. And
this phenomenon must be conversationally unconscious. Up to now it had not been
described in textbooks and it is not a documented part of treatment technique – but it
operates in psychoanalytic conversation.
Grabhorn et al. (2005) analyze speech of an anorectic patient during a 12-week treatment
in a psychotherapeutic ward. At the beginning of treatment they find high levels of
resistance indicated by the SASB-method (Benjamin, 1974); in the middle of treatment
resistance gradually disappears and a therapeutic alliance can be built up. At the end they
find more autonomy. Spence et al.’s (1994) findings are more fine grained: in the
beginning of treatment this patient used the addressing of the therapist very often,
clinically this indicated low levels of autonomy and autoplastic adaption to treatment
conditions. When in the middle phase of treatment the conversation phenomenon
disappeared this was clinically interpreted as a necessary self-reorganizational retreat; the
reappearance of addressing the therapist was considered as a new step in autonomy.
CA – Opening a New Way between the Scylla of

Hermeneutics and the Charybdis of Science
So far we have reviewed relevant CA-research and included some excerpts of our own
study in order to show that the distinction of metacommunication, representation, request
and challenge, as described by Labov and Fanshel (1977) would not suffice to fully
describe the complex phenomena here. More mental or cognitive dimensions like
category-bound activity, sequentiality or unconsciously luring of the analyst’s response
cannot be described within the framework of Labov & Fanshel’s early work. CA
underlines that patients need confirmation and ratification by the other subject. This
reminds one of Tomasellos (2008) differentiation between types of conversation as

inform, request and sharing. According to this author the ability to share (information,
perspective, knowledge) is a human condition and not found in apes.
Addressed in this line of research is a very relevant aspect of process research: how
conversational and cognitive processing relate to each other. Hepburn and Potter (2011)
regret in the period of developing one’s own research strategies, “conversation analytic
work has not attended to cognitive matters” (p. 219). Today CA-research addresses the
psychological more directly. Analyzing category-bound activity during conversation
characterizes the interface of CA and psychoanalysis.
This is a very delicate domain as it is traditionally assumed that talk follows other rules
than mental and cognitive processes, that thinking is much faster than talking and that
both have very different capabilities. Psychoanalysis is somewhat “mentalistic” while
conversation is seen as outward directed and concerned with the observable only. If
things are left in this way conversation and psyche could never be brought together. This
is obviously a false conception as people at least in therapies strive for letting another
person know what they feel is in their psyche. So a way must be found to bring both sides
together without giving up methodological rigorism and precision of observation.
Peräyklä (2011), experienced in both practices of analysis, proposes as a third way to

overcome the dichotomy of “inner” and “outer” experience and to see this difference as
one produced by cultural and conversational practice. He defines psychoanalysis
as a practice in which the client and the analyst explore their inner experiences, and
step by step either recognise dimensions of affect and cognition that appear for them
as ones that have always been there but have not been perceived with clarity before, or
achieve new dimensions of affect and cognition that are real but have not been
possible to be experienced before the psychoanalytic process. In short, feelings,
thoughts, hopes, desires appear as real phenomena in psychoanalytic practice – not
merely as artefacts or projections produced by linguistic and interactive processes in
the consultation room or elsewhere (p. 237).
He comes to propose a new sight. The “inner” world and its difference to the outer world
are demarcated by a symbolic and interactive border. Here operates a category-bound
activity of a very important kind. This border is in itself constituted by conversational and
interactive practice defining an individual’s personal, private, “inner” sphere and it is a
culturally widespread distinction. In case of a projection this inner sphere is outside of the
individual, in case of introjections the outside world is inside.
Self and conversation can be considered as the two sides of a coin: the system of mutual
affective regulation. Interactional and more psychological (“inner”) processes of

regulation can be brought together. The details of this “come together” are tasks for the
future. Here we offer a perspective to analyze process dimensions of psychoanalytic talk
from both sides: from conversation and psychoanalysis. The psychoanalyst´s responses to
a patient are describable as related to contexts which are self produced for the moment,
emerging and then fading away replaced by new contexts in and by conversation. Thus, a
central problem of psychoanalysis can be brought closer to a solution: How is the
relationship between a general theory and a practice which operates helpful only when
the individual dimension of the unconscious is approached and can be recognized,
addressed, touched and seen? This dilemma of general theory and individual truth is
contained in the ongoing and never ending controversy about the question: is
psychoanalysis a science or is it hermeneutics? (Thomä & Kächele, 1975).
This controversy goes back to the German philosopher’s Wilhelm Dilthey distinction
between these types of scientific endeavor and it lasts on to our days (Boesky 2008). One
could conclude that the two models of “hermeneutic” and “science” are in itself
insufficient. A psychoanalyst does not “interprete a text” and he does not “apply” a
general theory to an individual patient. Merton Gill remarked that to apply a theory in
psychoanalytic consultation equals like having earwax in the third ear. Both, hermeneutic
and science, differently appreciate the subjective dimension of human existence. While
hermeneutic positions favor this dimension they are rebuked for this as they never could
achieve in a mature position in academic controversies; while scientific positions claim to
work scientifically they are rebuked from the other side to ignore individual suffering,
meanings, dimensions. If human beings were fully determined by the laws of nature there
would be no place for subjectivity and individual decisions; if human beings were fully
“free” in every respect one never could substantiate human sciences. This controversy
became part of repetition compulsion in psychoanalytic generation building. Same topics
are treated again and again in every new generation and clearing up operations in
theoretical questions that have been solved are widely left out. The most serious
consequence was that psychoanalysis did not evolve a research paradigm in its own right.
Both positions suffer from a fundamental inability to conceptualize a basic dimension of
humanity, which is the social dimension expressed in conversation and interaction. It is in
this social dimension only that we are constituted as individual persons with a personal
history brought into new interactive encounters with others who contribute to change our
conceptions of who and how we are. It is time to include a (micro-)social dimension into
psychoanalytic theorizing and give it a more central place. This enables psychoanalysis to
give answers to what “clinical facts” are. Psychoanalysis and its clinical facts are locally
produced, naturally organized, reflectively accountable, ongoing in practical
achievement, always, only, exactly and entirely, by participants’ work in and during
sessions - this is the fundamental phenomenon.
Psychoanalytic process research seeks to provide detailed analyses of the assemblages of

practices which are partially based on tacit knowledge through which the work of
accomplishing local “social order” of an individual psychoanalysis is achieved. It is as
Winnicott wrote that there is no baby without its mother. And there is no psychoanalytic
patient without an analyst. We can turn this statement around: there is no analyst without
a patient. Both must come together to produce what we consider as psychoanalysis. This
production is a social phenomenon including hidden dimensions of conversation, of tacit
knowledge and individual skillfulness on both sides. We can approach the riddle of
“clinical facts” when we begin to consider the dyadic nature of the psychoanalytic
endeavor. And CA is a powerful tool for psychoanalysis. The “common ground” of

psychoanalysis might neither be Oedipus theory nor early envy, neither repetition
compulsion nor death instinct, neither phantasy nor reality and what other conflictual
themes might come to mind. This all is on the level of theory “applied”.
Our theoretical conceptions allow a huge range of individual variability of technique

embedded in an enormous amount of individual variability of patients and analysts.
Debates might receive a new and fresh drive when psychoanalytic treatments are
conceptualized as social patterns of relating and affiliating, of formulations and
reformulations, of discovery and interpretation. Including more strictly the social
dimension might help to join a research program that has begun to show that some of our
most urgent problems can be brought closer to a helpful solution. If hermeneutics and
science are two sides of a coin the whole debate always saw one side covered in the dark,
either hermeneutics or science, either subjective dimensions or the more general law,
either individual meanings or the more general theory. To bring this coin to stand up in
order to make both sides visible will demand to give this coin the knack: to make it turn
as fast as possible by conversation and other social influences. There is no standstill.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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Multilingual Clients’ Experience of Psychotherapy
Jean-Marc Dewaele1 Birkbeck College, University of London

Beverley Costa, Mothertongue
Abstract
The present study focuses on the experiences of 182 multilingual clients who had been
exposed to various therapeutic approaches in various countries. An on-line questionnaire
was used to collect quantitative and qualitative data. The analysis of feedback from
clients with multilingual therapists showed that clients use or initiate significantly more
code-switching (CS) than their therapists, and that it typically occurs when the emotional
tone is raised. Gender was unrelated to CS frequency. CS is used strategically when
discussing episodes of trauma and shame, creating proximity or distance. CS allows
clients to express themselves more fully to the therapist, adding depth and nuance to the
therapy. The therapist’s multilingualism promotes empathy and clients’ own
multilingualism constitutes an important aspect of their sense of self. Multilingual clients
benefit from a therapeutic environment where multilingualism is appreciated, and where
they can use CS.
Introduction
Over the past decade various attempts have been made to address the design and
relevance of social and health services for an increasingly diverse population.
Researchers have focused on the nature and challenges of offering psychological support
and therapy across cultures (Eleftheriadou, 2010; Fernando, 2010; Fernando & Keating,
2009; Lago, 2006; Lowe, 2013; Martinovic & Altarriba, 2013). Gradually more attention
has been paid to the role of multilingualism in therapy and the exploration of the
relationship between language and therapy (Amati-Mehler, Argentieri & Canestri, 1993;
Kokaliari, Catanzarite & Berzoff, 2013; Perez Foster, 1998; Santiago-Rivera & Altarriba,
2002; Szekacs-Weisz, 2004). Marcos (1976) is one of the pioneering studies in this
domain. He considered interactions of non-native English-speaking (LX) clients with
their English native speaker therapist. Being forced to use an LX has both advantages
and disadvantages for clients. They risk encountering encoding difficulties ‘in integrating
emotions and experiences, the displacement and blocking of affects, and the
reinforcement of obsessive resistances [which] may give rise to misinterpretations and
distortions of their problems’. (p. 552) However, the emotional distancing linked to the
use of the LX, which he calls the detachment effect, ‘may facilitate the verbalization of
highly charged material by clients who feel "protected" by the linguistic detachment’. (p.
552)
More recently there has been an increase in research into the experiences of multilingual
therapists providing therapy in a language in which they have not been trained (Verdinelli
& Biever, 2009). However, very little research to date seems to have incorporated the
1
 Correspondence about this paper should be addressed to j.dewaele@bbk.ac.uk 
voice and adopted the perspective of the multilingual clients (see however Espin, 2013).
Such an emic approach allows researchers to explore participants’ perspective, their
interpretation of behaviour, events and situation using their own language (Pike, 1964).
The present study aims to fill this gap. It was prompted by an initial investigation into the
experiences of monolingual and multilingual therapists with their multilingual clients
(Costa & Dewaele, 2012, 2013). The research described in this paper aims to open up the
discussion about multilingualism and therapy; to listen to and to convey the voice of the
multilingual client; and to compare and contrast the views of multilingual clients with the
views of multilingual therapists. The literature reviewed below characteristically presents
the opinion that multilingualism can be a useful resource which psychotherapy can draw
upon. Where there is a possibility of code-switching (defined as ‘changes from one
language to another in the course of conversation’ (Li Wei, 2007, p. 14)), this choice can
be ‘strategically used as a unique therapeutic technique.’ (Pitta, Marcos & Alpert, 1978,
p. 255). As already mentioned, there is little or no published research from the
multilingual client’s point of view. The review therefore draws together a number of
themes which emerge from the literature regarding multilingual therapists’ experiences as
well as the experiences of clients.
Themes emerging from the review of the literature

Collusion and management of boundaries
Antinucci (2004) proposes that common language and cultural identity can become part
of a collusive process between the client and the therapist. She believes that it is the
therapists’ task to address their cultural identity and fantasies that surround the desire to
collude. In this way, the professional therapeutic frame can be maintained. Similarly,
Akhtar (2006) uses the term ‘nostalgic collusion’ to denote a clinical situation where the
client and the therapist collude in avoidance. Mourning and idealisation of a lost culture
is not addressed, possibly due to the therapist’s unacknowledged grief over certain
aspects of his or her lost cultural history and language. The 101 multilingual therapists
interviewed in Costa and Dewaele (2012, 2013) acknowledged the potential for collusion.
One of the therapists suggested that there was a joint unspoken union: ‘We know nobody
else understands us, it’s only us’ (p. 7). This could lead clients to feel that there was a
special and intimate relationship with the therapists, which transcended the professional
role. The therapists highlighted the importance of attending to boundaries in a way that
shaped clients’ expectations about the limits of their role. The therapists also believed
that, although there were concerns about possible collusion, the benefits were that they
were able to help clients to feel more connected and less isolated.
Attunement
Costa and Dewaele (2013) found that psychotherapists agreed that learning a foreign
language made them better attuned to other languages and to multilingual clients: ‘I think
that if you have to learn various languages for whatever reason, you become much more
attuned to what the other person is saying, to try to understand (…) You are more attuned
to whether people understand or don’t understand’ (p. 6).

Similar views emerged from Verdinelli and Biever’s (2009) research with 13 Spanish-
English bilingual psychotherapists. The psychotherapists reported that they felt more
connected to clients with whom they shared their native language (L1) and that this had a
positive effect on the therapy. Amati-Mehler (2004) suggests that it is not only language-
matching between client and therapist which enhances the capacity for attunement of the
multilingual therapist. She suggests that as a speaker of multiple languages, her ability to
hold multiple meanings and associations may make her more available for the complexity
and disordered language of some of her patients. A multilingual person may experience
less anxiety and greater ability to suspend immediate comprehension and to tolerate
ambiguous meanings. In a similar vein, Jimenez (2004) suggests that his multilingualism
allowed him to treat patients in Germany despite his imperfect knowledge of German. He
suggests that his ability to move between ‘the confusion of tongues’ and the ‘gift of
tongues’ contributed to the patient’s movement from confusion to clarification.
Frustration because of lack of training

The majority of the therapists who participated in the Verdinelli and Biever (2009) study
had taught themselves or had learned to provide bilingual therapy services by trial and
error. They all acknowledged the lack of attention in current training and supervision to
multilingual issues in therapy. The therapists in Costa and Dewaele (2012, 2013) also
mentioned lack of training and the difficulties they experienced working in their L1 in
therapy where they did not have access to the professional vocabulary or experience in
relating professionally in their L1: ‘Well, when I was thinking about coming to do this
interview, I wondered whether I wasn’t really a fraud, because although I do speak
various languages, I’ve always been trained in only one..., I find it incredibly difficult to
explain, because I’ve never picked up a French textbook about CBT.’ (2013, p. 8).
Language gap and switching

Although no therapist in Costa and Dewaele (2012, 2013) had tried out inviting other
languages into the therapy, they were interested and saw the potential of trying this. This
is consistent with the experiences of therapists in Verdinelli and Biever (2009). These
therapists did engage in code-switching (CS), but only 2 of the 13 participants had
learned formally about CS. The others had discovered the advantage of its use by
experience and by trial and error. Although Pitta et al. (1978) regard CS in therapy to be a
useful tool, they caution that the client can choose languages which support their
resistance to the therapy. This was a view shared by some therapists in Verdinelli and
Biever (2009). Pitta et al. (1978) suggest that the dominant language has richer emotional
structures which can capture greater richness of experience, while others feel that this
language may not access the client’s intellectual resources for making sense of
experience and that the emotional potency of the L1 can impede cognitive processes.
Code-switching
As previously mentioned, relatively few studies refer to CS of multilingual clients in
therapy. Tehrani and Vaughan’s (2009) work (referred to later in the section on trauma)
advocates the use of CS as a way of helping the client to regain emotional mastery after a
traumatic experience and helping with psychic repair.

Szekacs-Weisz (2004) describes how some of her Hungarian clients who had followed
her to London from Budapest used CS occasionally in therapy: ‘I learned to pay attention
to English words suddenly popping up in the verbal environment of the mother tongue.
He said the first word in English while recalling a dream about a cockroach. Translating
the word in Hungarian: svabbogar (Svab being the name of ethnic Germans in Hungary,
bogar meaning bug), it became obvious that the pun in the dream is hiding painful
associations to Germans. Following on this line, he became able to talk for the first time
about silenced secrets and painful childhood memories of anti-Semitism’. (p. 26)
Altman, Schrauf and Walters (2013) focused on CS in the autobiographical memories of

mature immigrants. They point out that their personal memories include monolingual as
well as bilingual events, and that they can be told in either language of their repertoire.
Some narratives are monolingual while others are peppered with CS (p. 212). In their
study of 12 English-Hebrew bilinguals aged 64-79, the researchers found that 40% of
recalled memories where “crossovers”, i.e. a different language from the language of the
experimental session. These crossover memories had more frequent CS (p. 228). There
were more than three times as many crossovers from L2 to L1 than from L1 to L2 (p.
230). The multilingual therapist’s position with regard to the language gap can represent
the transitional process between the old situation, which has been left, and the new
situation in which the patient is living (Kitron, 1992). This type of therapeutic encounter
may be a useful tool in helping to detect ‘significant aspects of the patient’s unconscious
motivations’ and ways of ‘working through the relevant conflicts and resistances.’ (p.
10). The language gap was also identified as a creative tension by multilingual therapists.
Being able to tolerate uncertainty and ambiguity is a key skill for therapists. The gap
produced by not-knowing can be a source of therapeutic spontaneity and creativity.
Winnicott (1971) referred to this as the “potential space.”
Dewaele’s (2013) study on language preferences for emotion among 1569 multilinguals
revealed that participants reported CS significantly more frequently when topics being
discussed were personal or emotional compared to neutral topics. Dewaele argues that
when powerful emotions need to be verbalized quickly, and the speaker realizes that it
would take too much time to express them in the weaker output language, possibly with
unwanted pragmatic effects, CS might seem like an acceptable option (p. 215). One
participant, Vally (Greek L1, English L2, French L3, Turkish L4) reported: ‘I think when
I talk about emotional topics I tend to code-switch to English a lot. I remember when I
was seeing a psychologist in Greece for a while I kept code-switching from Greek to
English. We never really talked about this (...) To my mind it may have been some
distancing strategy because at the time I was trying to figure out what to do with my life’
(p. 206). Participants also reported that CS was often linked to a change in emotional
tone (p. 205). This could include a change in intonation and prosody, increased volume,
and faster speaking rate, conveying “emotional information above and beyond semantic
linguistic content” (Nygaard & Queen, 2008, p. 10).
Dewaele & Li Wei (in press, a) found that their 2070 multilinguals had a generally
positive attitude towards CS. In a further study on the same database Dewaele & Li Wei
(in press, b) argued that CS can be a creative discourse strategy used by multilinguals in
real-life interactions in order to achieve effective communication. It allows the insertion
of threads in different colours in the exchange and hence insert an element of novelty,
uniqueness and surprise. They found a considerable amount of interindividual variation
in their study of self-reported CS. The degree of multilingualism in the participants’ work

environment was linked to self-reported frequency of CS in a variety of contexts. CS was
also linked to higher levels of multilingualism and early bi- and multilingualism. Female
participants, extraverts and participants with high levels of Cognitive Empathy also
reported to engage more frequently in CS.
One therapist interviewed in Costa and Dewaele (2012, 2013) referred to her ability to
play with understanding and lack of comprehension, asking her clients to define and
explain what they meant by an idiomatic expression like “fish-wife” (p. 8). She felt that
by not sharing a common L1 with the clients she was able to allow herself the freedom to
be flexible and curious. There may also be a freedom for the client in the therapy where
the client can move, through switching languages, between feelings of closeness and
distance, power and powerlessness (Kitron, 1992). Szekacs-Weisz (2004) points out that
CS can allow clients to find a way out: ‘Patients can feel that therapy in their native
language binds them in a position they want to move away from’ (p. 27).
Identity
Imberti (2007) proposes that one of the ways in which multilinguals cope is by creating
new selves for each of the languages spoken. Imberti migrated from Argentina to New
York as a young woman and refers to the new self she had to create: ‘When we change
languages, both our worldview and our identities get transformed. We need to become
new selves to speak a language that does not come from our core self, a language that
does not reflect our inner-connectedness with the culture it represents.’ (p. 71).
The bilingual therapists interviewed in Verdinelli and Biever (2009) refer to their sense of
living in two worlds and that each language establishes and maintains separate cultures.
Pavlenko (2005), referring to the data on language preferences for emotion among 1569
multilinguals, noticed that for those who were still in the process of second language
socialisation, expressing affect in that language felt a bit fake, like the ‘emotions of a
different person’ (p. 134). However, she does reject the essentialist view of the bilingual
as having two languages completely insulated from each other, pointing out that
languages and identity are dynamic (p. 189). De Zulueta (2006) pointed out that language
is intrinsically linked with our sense of identity. Just as the mother tongue gives us a
particular sense of self, a second language learned after puberty can forge a protective
identity which can defend us from experiences which are too painful and overwhelming.
The therapists in Costa and Dewaele (2012, 2013) mentioned the shared identity with
multilingual clients of living between two cultures ‘(…) a monolingual won’t have that
experience, of going home or thinking that home is elsewhere, or being bored as I was as
a child, being dragged back home and thinking ‘Oh but I really would like to go like
everyone else (on holiday) to Portugal.’ (p. 8).
Trauma and Shame

Research conducted by Tehrani and Vaughan (2009) focused on the way in which
language can play a part in psychic repair where a traumatic event has occurred. They
demonstrated how bilingual differences and CS in therapy can increase emotional
mastery and how exploring past problems in a new light can be aided by a new language:
‘(...) where an individual is equally fluent in two languages the most significant factor in
increasing the quality and emotional content of the recall is the language and context in
which the incident was encoded.’ (p. 11)
Various commentators on the life of Samuel Beckett have observed that it was by writing
in French that Beckett was able to find his creative voice (Casement, 1992). Clare (2004)
observes that for some people a foreign tongue ‘can give voice to the words that could
not be spoken in their own language.’ (p. 184.) The emotional potency of the L1 can
impede cognitive processes: ‘Sometimes the mother tongue is too close to home and is
not conducive to thought’ (p. 184).
The therapy case reviewed in Pitta et al. (1978) concurs with the therapists in Verdinelli
and Biever (2009) who say that clients may use their second language to avoid painful
and shameful memories. One therapist commented that she pays attention to this strategy
and uses language to help clients to refocus and to stay with a difficult issue. Dewaele
(2013) in his study of emotions in multilinguals, relates that several Arab and Asian
participants reported that they switch to English to escape the social taboo in their native
languages and cultures. We can conjecture that this may occur because the additional
language can circumvent the superego (as embedded and encoded in the L1) and so taboo
words or emotions can be allowed to be expressed in a way that would not be allowed in
the L1.
Early memories and emotions

A review by Altman, Schrauf, and Walters (2013) on research into immigrant
autobiographical memory showed that autobiographic memory associations and retrievals
for events from childhood and youth (in the country of origin) are more numerous, more
detailed and more emotionally marked when remembering is done in the L1 rather than in
a subsequent language. Pavlenko (2012) reviewed clinical, introspective, cognitive,
psychophysiological, and neuroimaging studies of affective processing in bilingual
speakers in order to find out more about firstly, increased automaticity of affective
processing in the L1 and heightened electrodermal reactivity to L1 emotion-laden words;
and secondly the decreased automaticity of affective processing in the LX, which reduces
interference effects and lowers electrodermal reactivity to negative emotional stimuli.
Pavlenko concludes that L1 and LX affective processing ‘in some bilingual speakers, in
particular late bilinguals and foreign language users, respective languages may be
differentially embodied, with the later learned language processed semantically but not
affectively’ (2012, p. 405). However, the strong emotional associations of the L1 are not
systematically positive. Pavlenko (2005) talks about Russian, the language of her early
years: ‘It is also a language that attempted to constrain me and obliterate me as a Jew, to
tie me down as a woman, to render me voiceless, a mute slave to a hated regime. To
abandon Russian means to embrace freedom. I can talk and write without hearing echoes
of things I should not be saying. I can be me. English is a language that offered me that
freedom (…)’ (p. 22).
Research questions
1) Does CS in interactions with multilingual therapists originate in clients or therapists?
2) Is there a gender difference in self-reported frequency of CS by clients or therapists?
3) Does CS in therapy involve a change of emotional tone?
4) To what extent do the clients agree with 28 statements on linguistic practices with
mono- or multilingual therapists, perceptions and attitudes towards mono- and
multilingual interactions?
5) How important is it for the therapist to create an environment where issues of
multilingualism can be addressed in the therapy?
Methodology
Participants
Former or current multilingual clients of psychotherapists were invited to participate in
an online survey on their experiences. The only requirement was that they had to be bi-
or multilingual. The authors specifically avoided approaching people known to
themselves or to colleagues as clients for ethical reasons. The data was thus collected
through non-probability, snowball sampling, i.e. recipients of the call were asked to
forward it to friends and colleagues.
Over 200 participants agreed to fill out a short sociobiographical questionnaire and the
main instrument. After eliminating those who had not completed all vital parts of the
questionnaire, we retained 182 respondents. The sociobiographical questionnaire
contained questions about sex, age, nationality, education level, language history and
present language use, and the theoretical orientation of their therapist. A majority of
participants are women (N = 141). The mean age is 42 yrs (SD = 12), ranging from 21 to
71. Participants are generally highly educated: 8 reported having a Diploma, 24 a
Bachelor’s degree, 72 a Master’s degree, and 77 a PhD2. This majority of highly
educated, mostly female participants is typical for this kind of data collection (Wilson &
Dewaele, 2010).
The participants reported many different nationalities, including many participants with
double nationalities. The largest group is British (N = 36), followed by French (N = 15),
Americans (N = 14), German (N = 11). Other nationalities include Algerian, Argentinian,
Australian, Austrian, Belgian, Brazilian, Bulgarian, Canadian, Chinese, Croatian,
Cypriot, Danish, Dutch, Ecuadorian, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Iranian, Irish, Israeli,
Italian, Kosovan, Lithuanian, Malaysian, Mexican, Norwegian, Pakistani, Polish,
Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish, Swedish, Swiss, Taiwanese,
and Thai. Many participants are resident in the UK (N = 102). Their professions range
from academia (lecturers and professors N = 29, students N = 15, researchers N = 7), to
psychologists (N = 34), to bartenders, booksellers, housewives, interpreters, managers,
musicians, receptionists, and sales assistants. A large majority had lived abroad (N =
158).
English was the most frequent L1 (N = 50) and 39 other L1s. A little under half of the
participants had grown up with two L1s from birth (N = 81). The sample was highly
multilingual, with 38 bilinguals, 45 trilinguals, 45 quadrilinguals, 34 pentalinguals, 14
sextalinguals, 4 septalinguals, 1 octalingual and 1 nonalingual. Most frequent L2s were
English (N = 69), French (N = 33) and Spanish (N = 14). Other languages (L3, L4, L5)
included English, French, German, Spanish and Italian.
The median score on a 5-point Likert scale for ethnic diversity during the participants’
childhood was 2. However, the median score for ethnic and linguistic diversity in the
participants’ workplace was higher (4 and 3 respectively). Most participants had received
2 One participant did not supply this information. 

therapy in the Psychodynamic approach (N = 71), followed by the CBT approach (N =
47), the Humanistic Integrative approach (N = 21), the Systemic approach (N = 10),
Gestalt (N = 1), the remaining 32 participants were unsure about the approach or did not
answer the question. Participants reported having had between 1 and 8 therapists, the
largest group reported having had one therapist (N = 52), followed by two therapists (N =
49), three therapists (N = 43) with the remaining 38 clients reporting having had 4 or
more therapists. To the question whether any of their therapists were multilingual 84
clients answered “yes”, the remaining participants answered either “no” or “unsure”.
Among the clients who had multilingual therapists, 23 remembered having established
this before the start of the therapy, 16 at the beginning and 8 in the middle of the therapy.
The statistical analysis will only include the data of the 84 clients (64 women, 19 men)
who had had a multilingual therapist.
Instrument
The main questionnaire was exploratory in nature. It contained 28 items in the form of
statements with 5-point Likert scales (Strongly disagree, Disagree, Neutral, Agree,
Strongly agree). The items covered linguistic practices with mono- or multilingual
therapists, perceptions and attitudes towards mono- and multilingual interactions. Some
statements were phrased as personal statements (‘I’, ‘me’) while others were statements
about ‘therapists’ in general, the agreement with which, we assumed, would be coloured
by clients’ personal experience. The questionnaire also contained four open questions
inviting participants to recall an instance in therapy where a language switch was
significant, to reflect on a therapeutic benefit of a language switch, to remember the
feeling of hearing (or not hearing) that the therapist was multilingual. This resulted in a
database of around 11000 words. The questionnaire was pilot-tested with 10 clients. This
led to the deletion of some items and the reformulation of others. The final version of the
questionnaire was put on-line on Survey monkey and an open call was also addressed to
multilinguals, including those who had participated in previous studies, asking them to
forward the call to friends, colleagues or students. The questionnaire was anonymous.
Because the Likert scale data are ordinal rather continuous, we have used non-parametric
statistical techniques including Wilcoxon Signed Ranks test, Mann Whitney test and
Friedman ANOVA tests.
The research design and questionnaire obtained approval from the Ethics Committee of
the School of Social Sciences, History and Philosophy at Birkbeck College.
Results
A Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test revealed that CS originated more from the 84
multilingual clients than from their multilingual therapists. The median score of therapists
is 1.0 compared to 1.5 for the clients, in other words, the median difference between both
groups is 50%, which is a highly significant difference (Z = -3.9, p < .0001). A Mann
Whitney test showed no gender differences in self-reported frequency of CS initiated by
the client and the therapist (Mann Whitney U = 595, Z = -.15, p = ns and Mann Whitney
U = 588, Z = -.22, p = ns respectively). About a quarter of participants (N = 23) did not
answer the question about CS with their therapists and changes in emotional tone.
Twenty-four participants (39%) answered “no” to the question. The remaining 37
participants (61%) agreed that their CS was linked to a raised emotional tone. A

Friedman’s ANOVA test for related samples revealed significant differences between the
level of agreement with the 28 statements (N = 84, Chi2 = 612, df = 27, p < .0001) (see
Table 1).
Table 1
Items (as participants saw them) ranked according to degree of agreement
Mean
Items Rank
I consider that my language plays a role in how I behave in therapy. 21.9
I think the ability of a therapist is improved by working with people who speak a different first language (L1)from their own. 20.4
I think it is an advantage for the therapist to be familiar with a client’s culture. 19.7
I think the therapist being from the same culture as the client is an advantage. 19.5
It is easier to form a therapeutic relationship with someone who shares a L1. 19.2
It is easier to form a therapeutic relationship with someone who does not share a L1. 18.5
I think that therapists with bilingual skills are able to understand clients in a different way from therapists who are monolingual. 17.6
I use more non-verbal forms of communication with people who do not share my L1. 17.1
I consider that the languages used by the therapists in therapy play a role in how they behave as therapists. 16.8
I think that the L1 of the client is not relevantin therapy. 16.1
I think that therapists’ ability to speak more than one language attunes them more to cultural differences. 15.5
I avoid certain topics when talking to a therapist with whom I do not share a L1. 15.4
I feel that being able to work in anon-native language would give me more freedom to express myself. 15.4
I think therapists who speak more than one language are able to communicate more effectively with clients from different linguistic backgrounds. 15.1
I think that therapists who speak more than one language can understand clients whose L1 is not that of the therapist. 14.8
Therapists who speak more than one language can accommodate different languages more easily in therapeutic work with a client. 14.6
I think there are advantages to using a non-native language for the client in therapy. 14.0
Therapists with whom I share a first language relate differently from therapists with whom I do not share a L1. 13.0
I think a therapist feels less able to challenge clients if they share thesame culture or language. 13.0
I think clients can use a non-native language as a distancing device in therapy (if the therapist understands that language). 12.7
I think that the L1 of the therapist is not relevant in therapy. 12.6
I think my proficiency in my L1 affects the way a therapist views me. 10.8
I think therapists can use a non-native language as a distancing device in therapy (if the client understands that language). 10.4
I think how the client relates to the therapist and the transferential projections are likely to be affected by the client’s choice of languages used in 9.8
therapy.3
Working with the transference and the therapeutic relationship is easier when the therapist and client share a L1.4 8.7
I avoid certain topics when talking to a therapist with whom I share a L1. 8.1
From my experience I believe that levels of empathy between clients and therapists are affected by the language in which the therapy takes place. 8.1
It is easier to express strong feelings and emotionsin a non-native language. 7.8
The 17 items from the quantitative study with a mean rank of over 14.0 were distributed
into three overarching themes: 1) The multilingualism of the therapist promotes greater
empathic understanding; 2) Clients view their multilingualism as an important aspect of
their sense of self and of their therapy; 3) Language switches in therapy are more frequent
3 This was followed by the following statement: “(Please skip to question 22 if 
this question is not relevant to your understanding of therapy)” 
4
 This was followed by the following statement: “(Please skip to question 22 if 
this question is not relevant to your understanding of therapy)” 
 
when the emotional tone is raised. With these three themes in mind, we investigated the
182 clients’ responses to the open questions.
The multilingualism of the therapist promotes greater empathic

understanding
Comments which referred to attunement, connection and the relationship were considered
particularly relevant. C385 commented that the discovery that his therapist was
multilingual increased his sense of connection: ‘When I found out that my therapist was
multilingual, I felt that I had much more in common with him regardless if we continued
our interview in English. I felt that I could relate and reveal certain problems to him
rather than being analyzed by a uni-lingual doctor.’ (C38, French, Dutch, Italian, Spanish,
English, German)
It is interesting that the previous client does not state that he shared the same language as
his therapist. This appreciation of multilingualism in the therapist per se is reiterated by
another client: ‘Being multilingual myself, I would feel they would understand me better
(not even depended on the languages they speak), as I think growing up and living in the
society as a multilingual person is very different from monolingual, so I would feel a bit
closer to my therapist.’ (C75, Polish, English, French, Spanish, Italian, German)
However, a small minority of clients disagreed. This example refers to the level of
language ability necessary for effective therapy to take place. The client describes an
encounter with a non-native English-speaking therapist whose English skills he judged to
be ‘lower than my previous therapist’. This was the consequence: ‘I didn’t feel I could
talk freely about my feelings and experiences in whatever words felt best, but I had to
choose my words more carefully so that she would understand. I found this very
distracting and off-putting…’ (C115, English, French)
The majority of clients’ statements did concur with the finding from the statistical
analysis that the multilingualism of the therapist led to greater empathy and
understanding. One client referred to a sense of enhanced appreciation of cultural
nuances by multilinguals: ‘…I believe that multilingualism enriches the mind and makes
it easier to understand viewpoints, particularly some that may be very culture dependent.’
(C63, Bulgarian, French, English, Russian, Dutch)
Another client referred to her sense of connectedness through sharing a multilingual

identity with the therapist: ‘It would make me feel a connection with them because being
multilingual changes you. It is something in common and can help communication
because you have more ways to explain things even if you only share one language
because there is an internal system change when one becomes multilingual that is shared
even if the languages aren’t.’ (C14, English, Spanish, Portuguese, French)
For this client, although the shared experience of multilingualism was valued, this was
not related to the function of therapy. If therapy was not effective, multilingualism could
not add much value: ‘I gave up on the therapy after 4 weeks when I realised my Italian
5 We identify our participants with “C” (for client) followed by their number in 
our database. 
barber was giving me the same advice, in both Italian and English, and I was getting a
free haircut at the same time.’ (C93, Finnish, English, German, French, Italian)
For one client, the therapist’s multilingualism was an important factor for her to feel that
her experience would be understood. She felt that a multilingual therapist would value
plurality of language and culture: ‘When my therapist told me she was multilingual I felt
that I could relate with her better. Part of what I had gone into therapy for was my feeling
of loneliness and inability to connect with others in the United States because many
people do not value language and culture.’ (C73, English, Spanish)
Another client, with a monolingual therapist, ponders that the therapist’s monolingualism
and monoculturalism might have contributed to the lack of empathy: ‘I would perhaps
feel more understood by the therapist. If my problem is that I feel misunderstood by the
white society; the most important thing for me would be that the therapist understands me
along with my culture’. (C140, Urdu, Punjabi, Norwegian, English, Hindi, Swedish)
One client valued the increased empathy and understanding, which she associated with
the therapist’s multilingualism: ‘It means they have an interest in an “otherness” enough
to learn the language, or might be multicultural themselves. It also makes aware of the
nuances that might be missed and that the patient might have other contextual realities.’
(C150, German, English, French, Spanish). However she added that this really should be
the case for monolingual therapists too: ‘But this should be realised within a single
language relationship as well.’
Clients view their multilingualism as an important aspect of their

sense of self and of their therapy
This broad theme was divided into 2 sub-themes: 1) Identity 2) Early memories and
Emotions.
Identity
One client describes how she experiences herself differently in different languages, and
that this had significant implications for therapy: ‘I feel like a huge part of me just
doesn’t go to therapy with me. I have different personas with each language I speak so
only speaking in English in therapy isn’t helpful... If I have to translate into English… it
just isn’t the same for me.’ (C14, English, Spanish, Portuguese, French)
Identity and language are wrapped up with culture. de Zulueta’s (1995, p. 179)
observation that ‘language is to culture what DNA is to genetics’ is particularly relevant
here. C114 observes: ‘I left Germany as a young girl, running away from my identity
which was an imperative detail of my therapy. Having a German speaking therapist
helped me a very great deal -something that I only fully understand now.’ (C114,
German, English)
Clients talked about having to use a particular phrase or term in their own language in
order to explain a cultural concept that might have no equivalence in the therapist’s
language and culture: ‘… when I worked with a humanistic counsellor I spent time

explaining what “Xiao-Shuen” [filial piety, or being a good daughter] means and how
that affects my decisions,’ one client explained. (C141, Mandarin, English)
Clients also referred to the liberating effect of accessing different parts of themselves via
different languages: ‘Living and working in my own therapy in another language forced
me to break free from cultural boxes and compartments in my mind.’ (C153, Swedish,
English, German, French, Spanish)
The choice of language might also reflect the potency of a particular phrase: ‘I once used
a French phrase, à voile et à vapeur, to express someone’s sexuality, because there is
nothing like it in English.’ (C53 English, French, Sotho)
Others provided examples of phrases for which there was no adequate English equivalent,
or phrases which described the particular cultural nuances of a phrase they had used in
therapy. These included (with translations by the participants):
in German: C119: Gratwanderung – ‘the narrow zone that humans inhabit/the
precariousness of existence’
in Portuguese: C176: Quem me dera? – ‘How I would wish!’
in Spanish: C183: (recalling a word used about her in childhood): aburridora –
[literally, bored, tedious, wearisome] – ‘and until today, I still can’t find the English
equivalent’.
‘Early memories’ and ‘Emotions’

Many clients commented on the way in which their early memories were encoded in their
L1. They felt it was important to be able to access these memories in therapy: ‘My
therapist did not understand my [L1]. However she asked me to talk about my childhood,
which seemed irrelevant in the therapy in English. However when I mixed in some words
from my [L1], it started to make more sense talking about my childhood. As if English
language did not let my memories come back efficiently enough, and I just needed some
key words in [my first language] to bring memories back.’ (C76, Russian, Lithuanian,
English, Spanish, French, Italian)
Others commented: ‘It [speaking in her L1] was very beneficial for my getting in touch
with how I feel and felt in the past about my mother with whom I only spoke my mother
tongue, and so I needed to “speak” with her (in my mind) in that language. I could not
begin to really feel what I would “say” to her unless I imagined the words in my native
tongue.’ (C166, Slovenian, English, German, Croatian, Spanish)
‘Once, I was describing my stepfather’s house and the words for a lot of elements in the
building just came out in Spanish. It was a bit like unblocking of visual and emotional
memory…the colours of the elements returned to my mind and gave me the emotional
resonance of the place.’ (C6, Spanish, English)
Code-switches in therapy were common when the emotional

tone was raised
Clients gave numerous examples of CS to create greater emotional proximity or distance.
Most welcomed this as a resource to deploy in their therapy. Some were less convinced.
Most notably those who had had psychoanalytic therapy, found CS served only to further

complicate their struggles to make themselves understood: ‘I think there would have been
more “misunderstandings” and word (power) games. Actually I felt misunderstood
enough in a monolingual setting as it was… I endured it for a year, five times a week.’
(C66, Spanish, English, French, Italian, German)
Another client saw no point in CS if the therapist did not share the same languages: ‘I
suspect that undergoing therapy in a language not your own is like pisser dans un violon’
[urinate in a violin] (C182, French, English, German, Spanish)
The majority, however, enjoyed CS, providing the therapist was open to the idea: ‘The
therapist was not necessarily fluent in the language but was simply present as I expressed
myself. It felt liberating and allowing. I have applied this sometimes with clients myself.
It doesn’t matter whether the therapist understands the actual language spoken: there
comes a point where I as a client am invited to hear and listen to myself. This is very
helpful, in the presence of another benevolent being.’ (C168, French, Italian, English,
German, Spanish)
One client, however, cautions that as well as being open to the idea, the therapist needs to
be skilful in working with the CS. This client explains how she was invited to switch
languages in order to increase the emotional resonance of her description. However: ‘I
didn’t find much comfort in confiding this to someone who probably didn’t understand its
various connotations – I felt more alone than when I explained in English how I felt about
the incident.’ (C178, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese)
C114’s experience was more positive. He describes how the CS changed the emotional
tone both for him and for the therapist: ‘It was easier to “let myself go” in Spanish and
easier for the therapist to notice that I was NOT a stiff upper lip…as long as we were
speaking in English both of us were less ready to express emotions. We used more
formulaic expressions for conventional small talk phrases, like “I am not at my best”
instead of Spanish “me siento como un perro mordido” (I feel like a bitten dog)…Spanish
allowed for code switching.’ (C113, Polish, German, English, Spanish)
C63 feels that CS is a natural way of expressing herself: ‘… describing a situation or a

sentiment idiomatically in one language provides better approximation to the “real” thing
and expresses more subtle nuances. In my experience this happens automatically. If in
one of the languages I speak there is an expression like that, it does come to my lips
whether I want it, or not. Then it’s up to me to let the lips share it, which I usually do.’
(C63, Bulgarian, French, English, Russian, Dutch)
Interestingly, although, some therapists expressed concerns about the safety of code
switching in Costa & Dewaele (2013), many clients had different views. Some said they
found the ability to switch languages helped them feel safer when talking about very
difficult topics: ‘For me using English when describing something very delicate or
important to me is like having a safety net or a parachute. If I cannot say it properly in
German, I know I shall be able to say it properly in English.’ (C28, French, English,
Spanish, German)
A number of clients made reference to the emotional charge in different languages with
reference to the transference: ‘The mother tongue i.e. the language your mother spoke to
you in is highly significant in the transference.’ (C126, Guajarati, English, French,

Spanish) Others referred to the languages in which they conducted different relationships:
‘It helped to be able to switch languages when talking about things that transpired
between me and my ex-boyfriend who was Mexican. It helped to be able to describe
some of our interactions using the language (Spanglish) that we interacted in.’ (C73,
English, Spanish)
Some made reference to the power differentials when different languages are spoken with
varying levels of fluency by the therapist and clients in couples/family therapy. One
client described a couples’ therapy intervention where the therapy was conducted in his
wife’s first language and his second language. He had tried to switch languages but was
not understood and felt he could not express himself: ‘…so in the end I had to use “next-
best” phrase strategies (…) the lack of switching was what was significant for me.’ (C42,
English, Turkish, French, Spanish, Hausa)
There are two particularly significant areas singled out by clients for code switching in
therapy: trauma and shame. In both these areas code switching is employed to achieve an
increase or decrease in emotional tone.
Trauma
Being able to access more than one language for the re-telling of a traumatic experience
can be a useful resource for therapy. For some it can provide access to a less emotionally
charged medium. As C71 said: ‘I felt more comfortable speaking about traumatic events
in my non-native tongue. I feel that in my particular case I was able to let go of pain
easier thus.’ (C71, Hungarian, German, English)
For others, the increased intensity of a language can help them to cope with a traumatic
event. C168 found that she was better able to process the trauma by describing it in the
language in which it occurred: ‘I remember being given permission/being asked to
express a traumatic incident in the language in which it happened. This I found very
liberating.’ (C168, French, Italian, English, German, Spanish)
Shame
Clients frequently mentioned the use of CS to avoid cultural constraint associated with
using their own language. C81 describes using a second language for: ‘… speaking about
topics which I was ashamed of. It is a way to put facts in the distance’ (C81, French,
English, Spanish, German)
Another mentions a freedom from taboo in his LX: ‘I was not carrying as much cultural
baggage when I spoke French in therapy. I felt more at ease talking about “taboo
subjects” [sex] in therapy in French than in English. I felt I was more distanced from the
“controversial subjective” and probably culture- based aspects of sex. No sex please
we’re British vs. a freer attitude.’ (C50, English, French, Spanish, Swedish)
Sometimes, not sharing a L1 with the therapist can allow the client some distance from
the experience of shame while allowing the maximum toleration of feeling. C184
mentions: ‘…having said a heavy swear word in my mother tongue and felt not as
ashamed in thinking my therapist would not understand exactly the heaviness

nevertheless understanding its connected sense of feeling and favouring a cathartic
episode.’ (C184, German, Sardinian, Italian, English, Spanish)
Alternatively, using a second language may temper the strength of the expression of an
emotion: ‘I’ve never switched the languages but, saying this, I can say that I struggled to
express my anger on a few occasions. I know I could easily do this by using, for example,
swear words in my native language. Swear words in a second language do not have as
much strength.’ (C92, Polish, English)
Discussion
In response to our first research question, statistical analysis revealed that participants
who had had multilingual therapists reported switching language in interactions with their
therapists significantly more frequently than therapists. In other words, clients who knew
they had that possibility were more likely to switch. Recommendations are made in the
literature (Pitta et al., 1978; Verdinelli; 2009) for the therapist to initiate CS in therapy
and thus avoid the use of language-switching as a form of resistance. However, clients in
this study welcomed the ability to initiate CS themselves as a way to connect them with
the intensity or to allow them the distance they needed in a given moment. That is to say
that clients valued the potential to manage the emotional flow themselves. This is
consistent with the argument put forward by Dewaele (2013) in his study on language
preference for expression of emotion. He suggests that people often choose to verbalise
strong emotions in a language which allows them speed of expression so that the potency
is maintained, illustrated in the current study by the phrase: ‘let the lips share it’ (C63).
Clients also referred to the way in which switching to another language could help them
to ‘break free from cultural boxes’ (C153). Similarly, the therapists in Costa and Dewaele
(2012, 2013) regarded the language gap as a source of creativity.
The answer to the second research question is negative as no difference emerged between
male and female clients in their self-reported frequency of CS initiated by themselves or
by their therapist.
The answer to the third research question is less clear-cut, although it went in the
expected direction: 39% of the clients who had had multilingual therapists and answered
the question felt that CS was not linked an increased emotional tone, the remaining 61%
of clients reported that CS in therapy involved an increased emotional tone.
The answer to the fourth research question was based on an analysis of the Likert scale
values for 28 statements on linguistic practices with mono- or multilingual therapists,
perceptions and attitudes towards mono- and multilingual interactions. The statistical
analysis showed significant differences in levels of agreement with the statements. Three
broad themes emerged from the 17 items with the most positive ratings: 1) the therapist’s
multilingualism promoting empathy; 2) the clients’ multilingualism as an important
aspect of sense of self and of the therapy; and 3) the increased CS when the emotional
tone was raised, especially when dealing with trauma and shame. These themes also
appeared spontaneously in the feedback of clients. Unsurprisingly, many of these themes
have been observed in earlier studies. Costa and Dewaele (2012, 2013) found that the
majority of the multilingual therapists believed that their multilingualism increased their
ability for attunement and empathic understanding with their client. Amati-Mehler
(2004) believes her ability to attune to complexity is enhanced by her ability to hold

multiple meanings as a multilingual. The majority of clients felt that language-matching
with a therapist was not necessary but they felt more connected to a therapist if they knew
that they were multilingual, an opinion shared by the therapists interviewed in Costa and
Dewaele (2012, 2013). Clients also stated that a multilingual therapist would be more
aware of ‘nuances that might be missed and that the patient might have other contextual
realities.’ (C140) Many clients also reflected on the importance they attributed to their
multilingualism in terms of their sense of self and their identity and a sense of having
multiple personas (C14). This is a popular theme in multilingualism research, especially
the richness and the freedom that cultural hybridity provides (Dewaele, 2013).
Clients also referred to the way in which their early memories were encoded in their early
languages and how it was important to be able to express their feelings in the
corresponding language. (C76, C166). This is consistent with the findings from studies on
autobiographic memory associations (see the review in Altman et al., 2013) and
Pavlenko’s (2012) argument that bilingual speakers may process the later learned
language semantically but not affectively.
The answer to the final research question, namely the importance for the therapist to
create an environment where issues of multilingualism can be addressed in the therapy,
was largely affirmative. Clients reported positive experiences and welcomed and valued
an environment where multilingualism had a place in the therapy. They appreciated it
when a monolingual or multilingual therapist invited them to speak in other languages
whether or not the therapist understood and they felt they were able to engage more fully
in the therapy (C76, C166, C6, C168).
Antinucci (2004) and Akhtar (2006), both psychoanalytically trained therapists,

recommend that the multilingual therapist should be mindful of the potential to collude
with the client’s mourning or idealisation of a lost culture or language. Antinucci (2004)
suggests that the therapist should address the fantasy around the shared “otherness” with
the client. Clients of psychoanalysts who took part in this study had different experiences.
For example: ‘There was no such disclosure and you are not allowing for other kinds of
analysis - indeed, I don’t think such disclosure would have been permitted, or at least I
cannot recall that there was an offer that it was going to be.’ (C66, Spanish, English,
French, Italian, German).
Conclusion and implications for practice

The present study aimed to focus on the voice of the multilingual client in therapy.
Having collected quantitative and qualitative data via an on-line questionnaire from a
relatively large sample of multilingual clients (N =182) from all over the world, who had
been exposed to a wide variety of therapeutic approaches, we have a database with strong
ecological validity (Wilson & Dewaele, 2010). In other words, “local” effects are
unlikely to have overly influenced the patterns that we uncovered. However, because our
respondents were generally highly educated and only a minority had traumatic
experiences of migration, we cannot claim that our findings apply to all multilinguals in
therapy. More research is needed on multilinguals who have experienced traumatic
migration and for whom language differences are not seen as benign but may have been
part of the traumatic experience (for example the languages in which torture or political
strife may have been conducted). Another limitation of our research is the fact that not all
respondents had had therapy with a multilingual therapist. Respondents left responses

blank if they had not had the experience and made it clear in their Open Box answers if
they were writing about real or imagined experiences. Only real experiences were
analysed and reported on. Some did report the very real frustration of not having had a
multilingual therapist.
The patterns that the current research revealed were that clients report more frequent CS
than their therapists, and that CS occurs more frequently when the emotional tone is
raised. Further analysis revealed that clients use CS strategically when discussing
episodes of trauma and shame. CS allows them both to gain proximity or distance
according to the need. Clients reported that being able to switch between languages
allowed them to express themselves more fully to the therapist, being heard in “stereo”
rather than in “mono”. The ability to do so added depth and nuance to the therapy, a
view defended in previous research (Espin, 2013; Kokaliari et al., 2013; Verdinelli,
2009). Many of the views of the multilingual clients correspond with the views of
multilingual therapists. Unlike the therapists however, the clients did not perceive their
language switching as a means of avoiding emotional depth, there was general agreement
that the therapist’s multilingualism promotes empathy and that a client’s multilingualism
constitutes an important aspect of the client’s sense of self, which has strong implications
for the therapy. Multilingual clients benefit from a therapeutic environment where
multilingualism is appreciated, and where CS is possible (Martinovic & Altarriba, 2013).
Although clients may not be aware of the lack of training as cited by multilingual
therapists (Verdinelli, 2009; Costa & Dewaele, 2012, 2013) some of their comments
pointed to this lack. One mentioned the aloneness they felt when invited to speak in their
language with a therapist who lacked comprehension (C178). Another alluded to the fact
that the qualities she valued in a multilingual therapist: ‘should be realised within a single
language relationship as well.’ (C140)
Three key implications for practice which emerge from this study are: the inclusion of
multilingualism and implications for therapy into the curriculum of psychotherapy and
supervisor trainings and accreditations; attention to the role that multilingualism can have
when working psychotherapeutically with trauma; attention by monolingual and
multilingual therapists to the way in which they invite a client’s multilingual personas
into the therapeutic space. The responses of the multilingual clients in this study remind
us of the role languages have in regulating affect, expression of emotion and reflexivity.
For all therapists, from all language backgrounds, this is a clear message.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the reviewers for their excellent comments and Ruxandra
Comanaru for her administration of the questionnaire. Sincere thanks also to our friends
and colleagues for forwarding our call for participation across the world. Finally, we are
very grateful towards our participants for sharing their thinking with us.

Biographies
Beverley Costa is a Psychotherapist and the Founder and Director of Mothertongue
multi-ethnic counselling service, which offers culturally and linguistically sensitive
counselling to people from black and minority ethnic communities.
Jean-Marc Dewaele is Professor of Applied Linguistics and Multilingualism. His research
focuses on individual differences. He is the former president of the European Second
Language Association and he is General Editor of the International Journal of Bilingual
Education and Bilingualism.

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Transience and Lack of Being
1
Khafiz Kerimov
American University in Bulgaria
Abstract
The essay aims at reading Freud’s essay “On Transience” through the prism of Lacanian
psychoanalytic theory. The claim of the essay is that transience results from the subject’s
inability to ensnare the present in its actuality. On account of the unbridgeable gap
between the subject’s supposed initial perception and its symbolization, the world is
present to the subject only insofar as it already belongs to the past. It follows that the
subject can neither achieve coalescence with itself nor discover the world around him in a
complete fashion. What is lost in the symbolized present is either fantasized in the past or
anticipated in the future. In Lacan’s perspective, these fantasies are never fulfilled: the
actual present is utterly impossible in the discursive reality of the human subject. In this
way, the Lacanian thesis that every drive is a death drive is reaffirmed in this essay: since
there is nothing outside the symbolic order for Lacan, the present in its actuality can only
be associated with the death of the subject. Furthermore, the essay argues that the present
as such is nothing other than an impossible event of temporal being which is, however,
essential for the constitution of time.
Introduction
Sigmund Freud’s (1997) little known essay titled “On Transience (Vergänglichkeit)”
records a conversation with a “young but already famous poet” and his “taciturn friend”
who may have been the poet Rainer Maria Rilke and his friend Lou Andreas-Salome. An
otherwise joyous summer walk in the countryside is shadowed by the young poet’s
gloomy thoughts on decay. Freud (1997) writes:
The poet admired the beauty of the scene around us but felt no joy in it. He was
disturbed by the thought that all this beauty was fated to extinction, that it would
vanish when winter came, like all human beauty and all the beauty and splendor that
men have created or may create. All that he would otherwise have loved and admired
seemed to him to be shorn of its worth by the transience which was its doom. (p. 176)
Freud provides a psychoanalytic explanation for the young poet’s inability to enjoy the
summer blossom. Freud’s argument in this respect is largely in tune with the main theses
1
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Khafiz Kerimov, E‐
mail: ktk100@aubg.bg 
of his famous “Mourning and Melancholia.” Mourning is the painful process of the
detachment of libido from its objects once they are lost or destroyed. The transience of
things makes future mourning inevitable. In this sense, the young poet’s disturbance by
the ineluctable decay of the beautiful is nothing else but simultaneously a preventative
mourning and an anticipatory renunciation of what is not destined to last.
Although the proneness to extinction of all things is undisputable, Freud does not share
the poet’s pessimistic view on the nature of transience. For Freud (1997), the thought that
“the transience of beauty should interfere with our joy in it” (p. 177) is incomprehensible.
Since “[l]imitation in the possibility of an enjoyment raises the value of the enjoyment,”
the impermanence of things should only lend them on that account more charm (Freud,
1997, p. 177). And yet this argument fails to alter the young poet’s melancholic state.
Toward the end of his essay Freud reduces the poet’s mourning to the pre-war malaise.
However, another explanation for the poet’s distress is also possible.
This essay aims at developing an alternative reading of transience by way of Lacanian

psychoanalytic theory. The claim of the essay is that transience results from the existence
of an infinitesimal yet unbridgeable temporal gap between the moment of the subject’s
initial perception of the world and the point of its symbolization. At the heart of
transience, thus, lies the fact that the world is present to the subject only insofar as the
world already belongs to the past. The feeling of transience has its origins in the insistent
slippage of the present into the past and, thus, its utter inaccessibility. Furthermore, this
essay maintains that the inaccessibility of the present in its actuality is that which initiates
the subject’s lack-of-being. In this connection, the subject’s lack-of-being predicates
itself upon the fundamental impossibility of the actual present. However, since there is
nothing outside the symbolic order for Lacan, the actual present can only be associated
with the death of the subject. The essay concludes with the revindication of the Lacanian
thesis that every drive is a death drive.
The Lacking Present

Perhaps, what is most disturbing about things around us, especially, the beautiful objects
to which our libido attaches itself, is not that they are destined to become absent, but that
we somehow cannot even enjoy them in their presence. That the beauty of the scene
around him will inevitably fade away with the coming of winter may not be, in fact, of
primary concern for Freud’s young companion. After all, as Freud rightfully notes, “each
time [nature’s beauty] is destroyed by winter it comes again next year, so that in relation
to the length of our lives it can in fact be regarded as eternal” (Freud, 1997, p. 177).
Rather, the poet feels pain in his inability to appreciate the joyous objects around at the
very present moment. More precisely, it is as if each object is not only historically
transient but also evanescent at each instant of time. The beautiful escapes Freud’s young
friend because of the very passage of time. It follows that the permanent evanescence of
things precedes their “historical” transience. The past and the future appear on the
horizon only insofar as the subject fails to come to terms with his libidinal desires in the
present. What Freud’s young friend cannot appreciate at this moment due to transience,
he hopes to enjoy at a certain point in the future or believes to have enjoyed at a certain
point in the past. Initially, the young poet’s melancholic state is caused by the mourning
over the irremediable transience of each and every instant of time spent at the beautiful
summer scene. Then, the anticipatory mourning over the beauty doomed to perish enters
the scene.

Freud’s approach to temporality in psychoanalysis can be summarized in the word
Nachträglichkeit (“afterwardness” or “deferred action”). Since Freud’s ambiguous use of
Nachträglichkeit results in a possibility of more than one interpretation of this concept,
here I insist on the late hermeneutic conception of Nachträglichkeit. Freud is perplexed
by the observation that in neurosis a traumatic event occurring before the age of puberty
only takes its toll on the subject already in puberty. It follows that it is not the experiences
themselves which act traumatically but their resurgence in the memory of the mature
individual. One reads in “The Project”: “Here we have the case of a memory arousing an
affect which it did not arouse as an experience, because in the meantime the change
[brought about] in puberty had made possible a different understanding of what was
remembered” (Freud, 1966b, p. 356). Hereby the traumatic potential of a childhood
trauma can only be actualized once the subject acquires the capacity for reacting to this
trauma. What is necessary for a revival of a trauma is a distressing yet mature encounter
with sexuality. It is through this encounter that traumatic memories find their deliverance:
“no hysterical symptom can arise from a real experience alone, but that in every case the
memory of earlier experiences awakened in association to it plays a part in causing the
symptom” (Freud, 1966a, p. 197). From this perspective, memory is not impermeable, on
the contrary, it is continually reconstructed in the light of present experiences and desires.
The subject can project the impressions, ideas, knowledge and fantasies acquired in the
course of its life onto its childhood memories and, thus, effectively change their content
and meaning. Consequently, traumas are not excavated in a pristine fashion from the
hidden depths of the past, but constructed in the present in a retroactive manner. The
crucial point not to miss here is that the meaning of each memory trace results solely
from the simultaneous presence of other memory traces. A hermeneutic reading of
Nachträglichkeit implies exactly this reciprocal relationship between the event in the past
and its later signification.
Jacques Lacan (2012a) situates Freudian Nachträglichkeit in relation to language:

“Freudian concepts take on their full meaning when oriented in a field of language and
ordered in relation to the function of speech” (p. 205). For Lacan, the notion of
Nachträglichkeit, or après-coup, captures the logic of signification by highlighting its
non-linear temporal character. Each new signifier retroactively alters the meaning of the
previous ones. Meaning as such is produced by this very movement backward and
forward of signification (Lacan, 2012a, p. 253). As Slavoj Žižek (1989) puts it: “As soon
as we enter the symbolic order, the past is always present in the form of historical
tradition and the meaning of these traces is not given; it changes continually with the
transformation of the signifier’s network” (p. 56). Likewise, Dylan Evans (1996) writes:
“present events affect past events a posteriori, since the past exists in the psyche only as a
set of memories which are constantly being reworked and reinterpreted in the light of
present experience” (p. 209). This is precisely the meaning of the phrase Jacques Lacan
(1991) utters at the very beginning of his first Seminar: “History is not the past. History is
the past in so far as it is historicized in the present” (p. 12).
It follows that the process of signification is structured by the movements of retroaction

and anticipation. Each and every signifier is necessarily in the state of anticipation of
more signifiers to come. In other words, at no instant of time the signifier is complete and
self-sufficient: the signifier always needs a supplement. Accordingly, the incompleteness
of the signifier in the present introduces the dimension of temporality proper. What is
lacking in the incomplete present is fantasized in the bygone past or anticipated in the
oncoming future. Freud argues that the young poet is unable to enjoy the beautiful

summer scene because he is worried about its impermanence. However, Freud’s
companion is, perhaps, also disturbed by the evanescence of things around him insofar as
he fails to enjoy them in the present. It is, once again, the incompleteness of the present
that makes the poet desire the absolute duration of the beautiful objects and anticipate the
future so vehemently. What renders the present incomplete so as to perpetually defer its
enjoyment onto the future? The answer to this question will also reveal the aspect of the
young poet’s wistfulness at the transience of things unnoticed by Freud.
The Unattainable Instant

In “The Logical Time and the Assertion of Anticipated Certainty: A New Sophism”
Lacan (2012b) distinguishes between three evidential moments of the logical time: the
instant of the glance, the time for comprehending and the moment for concluding. He
(2012b) notes that “each of these moments in its passage to next is resorbed therein” (p.
167). Concerning the instant of the glance and the time for comprehending, Ed Pluth and
Dominiek Hoens (2009) write: “The instant of the glance lasts as long as it takes to notice
what is given in the situation [...] The time for comprehending lasts as long as it takes to
make a line of reasoning” (p. 183). Finally, the moment for concluding is the
ascertainment of the previously made inference about the given situation. Apart from the
distinction between these three concepts, two relations are assumed: first, the
supersession of the initial gaze by the rational assessment of the situation and, second, the
suppression of all doubt at the moment of conclusion. The notion of the instant of the
gaze, however, proves to be problematic here. Having the status of an inaugural gaze, the
instant of the glance is supposed to be that which puts in place an experience for the
subject to process. Yet, precisely as an inaugural gaze proper, the instant of the glance
necessarily escapes the subject’s subjectivity. The subject as a subject of the signifier
only emerges with the second evidential moment, the time for understanding. What
endows the subject with subjectivity is the moment of understanding, that is to say, the
rational digestion of the instant of the glance and its inscription in the synchronous
network of the signifiers. Bruce Fink (1995b) writes pertinently: “To come to
consciousness a perception must pass through the filter of the symbolic order or Other”
(p. 226). The Other installs an infinitesimal yet unbridgeable gap between the moment of
the inaugural gaze and its symbolization. To formulate it differently, the Other never
assumes present modality. On the contrary, it only appears as stretching into the past or
the future. The instant of the glance is an evidential moment unlike others. At each instant
of time the inaugural glance is perceived later than its immediate occurrence and posited
as having existed earlier than its actual perception. Once again, the phenomenon of the
instant’s belatedness in relation to itself can be summarized in the term Nachträglichkeit.
Taking place at an interval between the first two evidential moments, namely, the instant
of the glance and the time for understanding, the subject of the signifier becomes
coterminous with the inaugural glance’s non-coincidence with itself. As a signifier, the
initial perception becomes perpetually caught up in the state of absence in relation to
itself. As Lacan (2012a) puts it: “Through the word – which is already a presence made
of absence – absence itself comes to be named...” (p. 228). The symbolized event
becomes inaccessible to the subject precisely because it is symbolized and, thus, absent.
Essentially, each and every event is for the subject a missed encounter. In other words,
the presence of the world takes place in the absence of the subject.

What follows is that the passage of time, the incessant making-past of the present, is the
direct result of the inscription of events into the signifying chain. In this connection,
time/language bars our access to the the present in its actuality and, thus, assumes the role
of the fundamental prohibition. Since every inaugural gaze is necessarily digested by the
Other and time never stands still, the subject always fails to get hold of the present. The
world is present to the subject only insofar as the world already belongs to the past. Thus,
what is conventionally understood as the present is, in effect, already the reproduction of
the past. The historically privileged modality of time, the present, hereby becomes
displaced leaving the Lacanian subject outside the parameter of the supposed temporal
center. In a sense, the present tense becomes the excluded center of Lacanian time. The
inaccessibility of the present brings it close to the notion of the Real. Otherwise stated,
the impossible inaugural glance becomes, at one and the same time, the moment of
impossible jouissance and the Real as a missed encounter. Jacques Lacan (1992) writes in
his Seminar VII:
We are, in fact, led to the point where we accept the formula that without a
transgression there is no access to jouissance, and [...] that that is precisely the
function of the Law. Transgression in the direction of jouissance only takes place if it
is supported by the oppositional principle, by the forms of the Law. (p. 177)
For the instant of the glance is rendered inaccessible by the Other, the subject necessarily
fails to coincide with its own inaugural gaze. Consequently, the subject is prevented from
attaining presence with itself. Being nachträglich in relation to itself, the Lacanian subject
becomes alienated not only in language but also in time. To use Kant’s vocabulary, the
gap separating the determining I (the “I think” of transcendental apperception) and the
determinable I (the empirical I, the I as object) is a temporal one. That is to say, the only
way I can reflect upon myself is through rendering myself temporally other than myself.
By the same token, the experience of oneself is always a return to that which is presently
otherwise. In this respect, Žižek (1992) suggests: “the self-positing I remains forever a
presupposition, something that is never posited as such, present in the transparency of an
actual I” (p. 87). Due to its reliance on the Other, the subject is only present in its
absence. In other words, the Lacanian subject never appears as such. Fink (1995a)
summarizes this in a very fair way: “Lacan never pinpoints the subject’s chronological
appearance on the scene: he or she is always either about to arrive – is on the verge of
arriving – or will have already arrived by some later moment in time” (p. 63). In regard to
this “that-has-been” component of the subject, Lacan (2012a) invokes Heidegger: “In
Heideggerian language […] remembering constitute[s] the subject as gewesend – that is,
as being the one who has thus been” (p. 212). In Heidegger’s Being and Time (1962) we
find the notion explicated as follows: Dasein (the subject) exists in its insistent coming
back to its ownmost “been” (p. 326). At this point, the Lacanian notion of manque à être
acquires a new dimension. At the heart of the subject’s manque à être lies the
fundamental impossibility of the actuality present. By its very nature, the actuality the
inaugural glance is impossible for the subject to ensnare. The subject is, thus, barred from
the actual present in the most literal sense. In simpler terms, the subject literally never is,
rather, it is either that which has been or that which will have been. The present becomes

accessible to the subject only insofar as it is symbolized, that is, incomplete and carrying
absence within itself. Necessarily being either too late or too early in relation to itself, the
subject never corresponds with its own being, with its own advent into presence.
Time and Desire

As Lacan (1995) formulates it in “The Position of Unconscious”: “As an effect of
language, in that he is born of this original split, the subject translates a signifying
synchrony into this primordial temporal pulsation that is the constitutive fading of his
identification” (p. 265). The true position of the Lacanian subject is between its doomed
attempts to assume self-presence and its mortification in the Other. What sustains the
subject in this impossible pursuit is desire. As Lacan (1988) puts, “the subject manifests
himself in his gap, namely, in that which causes his desire” (p. 16). Hereby the instant of
the glance represents for the subject the object-cause of its desire, the objet petit a, the
moment of inexpressible jouissance. The instant of the glance as objet petit a is an
impossible moment of the subject’s co-presence with the Real of the event.
In Seminar XI Lacan (1981) formulates objet petit a in the following way:
The objet a is something from which the subject, in order to constitute itself, has
separated itself off as organ. This serves as a symbol of the lack, that is to say, of the
phallus, not as such, but in so far as it is lacking. It must, therefore, be an object that,
firstly, separable and, secondly, that has some relation to the lack. (p. 103)
In Seminar VII Lacan (1992) describes das Ding (which is identical to an objet a) as “a
lost object, but paradoxically an object that was never there in the first place to be lost”
(p. 58). It follows that signification as such is articulated around the illusion of attaining
the elusive bits of Real, the elusive inaugural gaze. The transformation of the event into
signifiers involves a catastrophic loss of jouissance and, for this reason, renders the event
incomplete. In this respect, what the subject desires is a co-presence with the taking place
of the world, with its own advent into being. The subject desires a stoppage of time or
being outside time.
To come back to Freud’s “On Transience,” the desire for being outside of time lies at the
heart of Freud’s young companion’s wistfulness at the passing of time and the
inevitability of decay. The young poet clearly feels that nothing stays present to him even
for a second, that nothing is ever present. As was already said, the transience of each
perception predicates itself upon the unceasing making-past of the present by the Other.
Time does not let itself be halted. The young poet is confronted with the rapid slippage of
the present into the past whereby presence as such is only experienced as absence. For
this reason, the Freud’s companion is captured by the feelings of nostalgia and mourning
at one and the same time. On the one hand, he mourns over the perpetual loss of the
present, on the other hand, he is nostalgic about the present insofar as it always already
belongs to the past.

The Real jouissance of the scene around the young poet is forever lost at the very
moment the poet himself comes into being as a conscious subject. And yet the jouissance
of the inaugural gaze is never lost completely. On the contrary, it constitutes a necessary
remainder of the functioning of the signifying mechanism, something that makes the
subject conscious of the lost jouissance. That is to say, something perpetually escapes the
young poet’s perceptions simultaneously bruising him and making him crave for more.
Maintaining a distinction between reproduction and repetition, Lacan argues that the
psyche reproduces what is symbolized and repeats what cannot be symbolized, what it
stumbles upon. That is to say, whereas reproduction is a dreary succession of the
identical, repetition is always new and different failure of symbolization. In Lacanian
psychoanalytic theory, repetition aims at that which “interrupts the consistency of the
field of our constructions of reality, of the object of identification, by embodying the
repressed jouissance, the destabilizing part of nature excluded from its harmonious
symbolization” (Stavrakakis, 1999, p. 56). In the final account, the young poet’s hopeless
revolt against the evanescence of things comes down to a never-ending attempt to assume
that which cannot be symbolized. But every such attempt fails thereby causing the
insistence of the attempt to become the subject’s very being. The perpetual aphanisis of
the subject is constitutive of the dialectics of desire: the subject is nothing other but an
impossible pursuit of the actuality of the present. The young poet’s perpetual failure to
enjoy the beautiful summer scene opens up into the future in, as Verhaeghe (2002) puts it,
“[a] perpetual opening and closing of a gap in which something fails to be realized” (p.
139). However, paradoxically, the young poet’s pursuit of jouissance, of being, only
causes the further unfolding of the signifying chain. In turn, the extension of the chain
into the future necessarily displaces the present into the past seeming to cause the poet’s
loss of jouissance in the first place. At this point, the present, the future and the past
assume together a relationship of impossible mutual implication whereby the perpetual
unwrapping of the signifying chain becomes both the cause of the subject’s lack-of-being
and the ever-failing solution to it.
In this connection, the young poet’s melancholia testifies to the irremediable

incompleteness of any symbolization and the intractability of the Lacanian Real. As was
already suggested, temporal desire aims at compensating for precisely the self-deficiency
of the symbolized and non-actual present. Hereby the impossible jouissance is
perpetually postponed and the imperishability of the beautiful is sought. If anticipation is
one way for the subject to come to terms with the catastrophic loss of jouissance involved
in the symbolization of the inaugural gaze, then nostalgia is another. The incompleteness
of the present implicates the past resulting in the feeling of nostalgia. That is to say,
through nostalgia the subject simultaneously becomes aware of the experience of the loss
and attempts to make up for it. With the aim of clarifying the relationship between
nostalgia and jouissance, let us refer to Sean Homer’s (2005) discussion of Roland
Barthes’ Camera Lucida. Concerning photography, Homer (2005) writes: “[P]hotography
can never deny its past, that the thing existed and was there in front of the camera, but
that real is lost the moment the photograph itself comes into being” (p. 93). In a sense, the
lens of the camera becomes a vanishing mediator between the Real and the Symbolic.
The camera misses the encounter with the Real of the inaugural gaze at the very moment
it captures it. What is sacrificed to the camera is the instant of the glance qua objet petit a.
When one looks at a photograph, one senses precisely this recalcitrance of the instant at
which it was captured, one feels that something is lacking. As Homer (2005) maintains,
“[the photograph is] the encounter with the ‘that-has-been’ essence of photography, the
intractability of the real” (p. 93). Following Barthes, Homer identifies the feeling of the

photograph’s failure to coincide with its real referent as the feeling of punctum. A residue
of the intractable Real, the punctum becomes the “showing the Real” through its very
failure to deliver this Real. The punctum is what is in the photograph more and other than
the photograph, namely, the objet petit a. “Barthes’ detail [the punctum] that pricks us,
bruises us and disrupts the studium (the symbolic) of the photograph,” Homer (2005)
adds, “is that fleeting glimpse, or encounter with the real as objet petit a” (p. 94). The
photograph is a missed encounter with the Real par excellence. And memory-traces are
exactly like the images contained by the photographic plate. Once again, the photograph
is a missed encounter with the present that, nonetheless, always preserves a certain
residue of this encounter, the punctum, thereby inciting the feeling of nostalgia in the
subject.
The universally familiar feeling of the supremacy of the past pleasures to the present ones
can be, in fact, explicated through the notion of the punctum, as well. More precisely, the
punctum accounts for that vague and poetical quality which is only given to things by
time. In a sense, the events acquire something more to them once they start belonging to
the past. This is the point Søren Kierkegaard (1983) makes in Repetition: every attempt to
resuscitate some pleasant past experience necessarily results in a disappointment (p. 227).
Essentially being identical to the Lacanian anticipation, every such attempt strives to
ensnare the lost poetry of the past in the future. Of course, at the heart of Kierkegaard’s
pessimistic account of memory lies the desire for the inaccessible actual present.
What endows the past with a special charm is the belief that that which is lacking in the
present, namely, jouissance, was acquired back then. The crucial point not to miss,
however, is that this enjoyment was not attained during those moments either. The
present becomes desirable only through being lost and never prior to the loss. Hereby the
very pleasure of nostalgia lies in the displeasure of only being able to access the present
as inaccessible. Consequently, the function of the punctum is to render prohibited what is
originally impossible. As was mentioned earlier, the condition sine qua non of the object-
cause of desire is its inaccessibility: a sufficient attraction in relation to das Ding only
emerges whereby an unbridgeable distance is acquired from it. Žižek (1989) describes
this in the following way:
The sublime object [das Ding] is an object which cannot be approached too closely: if
we get too near it, it loses its sublime features and becomes an ordinary vulgar object –
it can persist only in an interspace, in an intermediate state, viewed from a certain
perspective, half-seen. (p. 170)
Furthermore, Žižek (1993) writes:
The paradox (and perhaps the very function of the prohibition as such) consists of
course in the fact that, as soon as it is conceived as prohibited, the real impossible

changes into something possible, i.e. into something that cannot be reached, not
because of its inherent impossibility but simply because access to it is hindered by the
external barrier of a prohibition. (p. 116)
In this light, prohibition serves to resolve the deadlock between the Symbolic and the
Real. More accurately, it serves to suture the intrinsically aporetic nature of the Symbolic
which gives rise to the irruptions of the Real. Since the elimination of the inconsistencies
in the Other is impracticable, its fundamentally aporetic nature is concealed by an objet
petit a which persuades us that the impossible is really just the prohibited possible and,
thus, can hypothetically be captured. The Other is lacking, so we bring the quasi-
imaginary Real to the field of our imagination to mitigate this lack. In this regard, Yannis
Stavrakakis (1999) contends:
If we speak about the signified it is only because we like to believe in its existence. It
is a belief crucial for our construction of reality as a coherent,’objective’ whole; a
belief in something that guarantees the validity of our knowledge, sustaining the
fantasy of an adaequatio between language and the world. (p. 23)
Being in and through the Other is sustained by the illusion of attaining the impalpable
Real, but this illusion is itself the effect of the signifying process. The illusory signified
that veils the Real lack in the Other as the piece of the “domesticated” Real is, indeed, the
objet petit a. Herein lies the Lacanian logic of the veil: covering sustains the sense that
there is something substantial being covered, while, in truth, no such thing is present
behind the veil. Where one anticipates protruding presence, there is always only
disappointing lack.
The Lacanian notion of time assumes here its paradoxical character. Certainly, there
would be no time without consciousness to symbolize and conserve its passage. That is to
say, the very idea of time is impossible without the preservation of past events in the
memory of the subject as signifiers. Yet, the events that necessitate preservation as such
are always inapproachable. The Lacanian notion of time is organized around the present
as an impossible negative event which grounds and disturbs the Symbolic at one and the
same time. Once again, the present tense is the excluded center of the temporal unfolding,
something that does not have positive existence.
In the Lacanian perspective, the paradox of Vergänglichkeit is irresolvable. The illusion

that there is something beyond the slippage of time, the a-temporal reality of the actual
present, is, thus, a purely reflexive one. In the a-temporal reality the subject would
coalesce with itself which is a sheer impossibility for Lacan. One reads in Seminar XX:
How is one to return, if not on the basis of a peculiar (special) discourse, to a
prediscursive reality? That is the dream […] But it is also what must be considered

mythical. There’s no such thing as prediscursive reality. Every reality is founded and
defined by a discourse. (Lacan, 1988, p. 32)
At this point, the Lacanian perspective on time stands in manifest contrast to the Freudian
one. For Freud (1991b), the a-temporal thing-in-itself exists positively beyond the field
of human representation: “Reference to time is bound up [...] with the work of the system
Cs” (p. 191). Similarly, Freud (1991a) suggests that “discontinuous method of
functioning of the system Pcpt.-Cs. lies at the bottom of the origin of the concept of time”
(p. 434). Freud (1966b) argues that the external world is undifferentiated masses of
energy without quality and nothing else (p. 308). For Lacan, on the other hand, the thing-
in-itself is only a mythical construction accounting for the distortions in the symbolic
order and the aporias of time. Here, the Lacanian discourse is in tune with Hegel’s
reformulation/critique of Kant’s thing-in-itself. Žižek (1989) summarizes Hegel’s
reproach of Kant in the following way: “Precisely when we determine the Thing as a
transcendent surplus beyond what can be represented, we determine it on the basis of the
field of representation” (p. 204). He (1989) adds: “Hegel’s position is [...] that there is
nothing beyond phenomenality, beyond the field of representation” (p. 204). It follows
that the actual present is only possible with the signifying chain coming to its ultimate
ending. However, since there is nothing beyond the field of representations for Lacan, the
a-temporal reality outside the Symbolic only coincides with the reality of the dead
subject. At this junction, the Lacanian formula “every drive is a death drive” assumes its
full meaning. For the Lacanian split subject there is only actual present after death.
Conclusion
This essay has highlighted how the universally familiar feeling of transience results from
the subject’s inability to confront the present in its actuality. On account of the
infinitesimal delay between the subject’s supposed initial perception and its
symbolization, the actual present is absolutely inaccessible. As a result, the subject can
neither achieve coalescence with itself nor discover the world around him in a complete
fashion. The loss felt in the symbolized present is either nostalgized in the past or
fantasized as compensated for by the future. In Lacan’s perspective, these fantasies are
never fulfilled: the actual present is utterly impossible in the discursive reality of the
human subject. Since there is nothing outside the field of representation for Lacan, the
present is unattainable for the subject except in its death. In this paper, the present as
such is presented as the impossible event of temporal unfolding which is, however,
essential for the constitution of time. The present instant qua Real is the absent cause of
time: something that we only discover through its effects, something that does not
precede its effects.
Acknowledgements
I  would  like  to  thank  Sean  Homer  for  his  assistance  with  this  article.    I  am  also 
grateful to the anonymous reviewer and the editors of Language and Psychoanalysis 
for their help in the preparation of the article.

Biography
Khafiz Kerimov is currently finishing his BA in philosophy and international relations at
the American University in Bulgaria.

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Signifying Truth: Augustine, Lacan, and a Theory of
Language
Zachary Tavlin1
University of Washington
Abstract
In this paper, I will show how a retroactive reading of Augustine by Lacan can help us
understand more clearly the process of the subject’s accession to language and inter-
human relations on the path toward understanding. I will distinguish the Lacanian reading
from the reductive Wittgensteinian reading, placing Augustine’s theory on language and
learning in a broader context, particularly with regard to the process of subjectivization.
Lacan explicitly read Augustine’s scenario of the jealous child in the Confessions, and
devoted an early seminar to his theory of language and signification; I propose to take
these readings seriously while showing that their psychoanalytic relevance extends
further into Augustine’s theory of language and subjectivity than perhaps is normally
recognized. Ultimately, though Lacan can help to clarify the stakes in which the linguistic
subject is ontologically limited (and in which ‘corporeal’, symbolic reality is truth-
deficient), this reading will help to show where Augustine’s theology has specifically
informed his theory of language and its subject, and where its revisions must fail (or set
out somewhere on their own).
Introduction
In this essay, I will develop a reading of St. Augustine’s theory of language that breaks
with Wittgenstein’s critique, which reduces Augustine’s concern to the mere correlation
between meanings and words. First, I will show how the semiotic distinction between
natural and conventional signs allows one to conceive of a more complex linguistic
structure. Then I will demonstrate how the distinction between the inner and outer word
suggests a space in language that provides the structure’s support despite its constitutive
position outside of it. From there, I will read Jacques Lacan (in particular, aspects of his
theory’s ‘structural’ phase) in order to develop this idea according to his concept of the
Big Other. In modeling language around a ‘lack’, and in relation to the social, I further
develop an idea of the subject of language, which grants both Lacan and Augustine a
system that can support the kind of speech acts that Wittgenstein’s picture didn’t account
for. Finally, I discuss a few of the ontological and methodological differences between
Augustine and Lacan, and consider their relevance to this project.2
1  Correspondence  concerning  this  article  should  be  addressed  to  Zachary  Tavlin, 
5024 Sand Point Place, Seattle, WA, 98105. E‐mail: ztavlin@uw.edu. 
 
 
Augustine against Wittgenstein
Wittgenstein reads Augustine’s ‘picture’ of language as the very oversimplification in
theory that a rigorous philosophy of language must overturn. For Wittgenstein,
Augustine’s language is merely a naming process; signifiers simply correspond with
objects in the world. He opens his Philosophical Investigations by quoting from
Confessions Augustine’s account of the transformation of sounds into designations:
I noticed that people would name some object and then turn towards whatever it was
that they had named. I watched them and understood that the sound they made when
they wanted to indicate that particular thing was the name which they gave to it, and
their actions clearly showed what they meant, for there is a kind of universal language,
consisting of expressions of the face and eyes, gestures and tones of voice…So, by
hearing words arranged in various phrases and constantly repeated, I gradually pieced
together what they stood for, and when my tongue had mastered the pronunciation, I
began to express my wishes by means of them. In this way I made my wants known to
my family and they made theirs known to me, and I took a further step into the stormy
life of human society, although I was still subject to the authority of my parents and
the will of my elders (Augustine, 1961, p. 29).
Wittgenstein claims that,
[these] words…give us a particular picture of the essence of human language. It is
this: the individual words in language name objects – sentences are combinations of
such names. In this picture of language we find the roots of the following idea: every
word has a meaning. This meaning is correlated with the word. It is the object for
which the word stands (Wittgenstein, 1953, p. 2).
But there is more going on here than Wittgenstein is willing to acknowledge. It is not just
that the child is able to repeatedly match the signifier to the referent and build a
vocabulary based on an extensive collection of those one-to-one relations. There are also
external relations (he “hear[s] words arranged in various phrases”) that suggest, even on a
primitive level, a differential structure. There are wishes being made, a ‘human society’
being encountered. And, importantly, there is a suggestion here of the performative
speech act: to make one’s ‘wants known’ is, at least in part, to attempt to alter a state of
affairs through language (one articulates a desire not just to state that the desire exists, but
as a means of fulfilling it).
Consider a distinction made by Augustine in De Doctrina Christiana between natural

signs and conventional signs. “Natural signs are those which, apart from any intention or
desire of using them as signs, do yet lead to the knowledge of something else”
(Augustine, 1995, p. 34), as in the common case of smoke betraying fire. But
conventional signs “are those which living beings mutually exchange in order to show, as
well as they can, the feelings of their minds, or their perceptions, or their thoughts”
(Augustine, 1995, p. 34). So Augustine attributes a fundamental epistemic function to the
sign, which alone gathers signifier and signified in a parallel relation, but also
distinguishes convention (and therefore language) with an added ‘intention to signify’.
This intention, or the place of the will extended to the sphere of communication, must be
seen (in its effects) in language and outside of the domain of the semiotic proper at the
same time.
The ‘intention to signify’ is the guarantor of conventional consistency, though it is not

what guarantees communication (which is a much more mysterious process). Rather, it
guarantees that the signifiers in use are a part of some language’s structure, or at least
intend to be (which covers cases where an enunciation’s syntax does not conform to
convention but is ‘close enough’ to fulfill intelligibility). However, it’s important to note
that convention, for Augustine, entails artificiality in comparison to something else. In the
20th century, when social and political processes are so often foundational, artificiality
and superficiality are used as positive terms to connote a plane of immanence –
structuralist language asserts that there is nothing else but the differential relations
themselves, and the arbitrariness of the signifier is language’s bedrock. And indeed, Ake
Bergvall succinctly describes the general similarities between structuralist linguistics and
Augustine’s theory of language (and joins Lacan himself in doing so):
Part of Augustine’s theory is strikingly modern; only with Ferdinand de Saussure did
linguistics and semiology catch up with it. In contrast to earlier simplistic descriptions
of a two-way relationship between res, the thing, and verba, the spoken word that
points to the res, Augustine introduced a third factor: the human subject. The human
mind forms a mental concept of the res, which it then translates into verba.
Augustine’s sign, like Saussure’s, therefore contained two parts: a signifier that is
primarily the spoken word, and a signified that is not the thing itself but a mental
concept of the thing…Although Augustine does not discuss the arbitrariness of the
sign in terms of Saussure’s difference he is aware of the practical implications of such
a view. “In some languages,” he concedes, “there are words that cannot be translated

into the idiom of another language” (OCD 2.11). Translation, because two different
speech communities are involved, is therefore no simple one-to-one equation
(Bergvall, 1993, p. 24).
But there is an aspect of Augustine’s system that does not translate easily into the
structuralist framework. As Richard Glejzer notes, “Unlike structural linguistic models,
both scholasticism and psychoanalysis are founded on an imperative to consider a
knowledge that resists signification, to bare the signifiers that ground ontology within an
epistemology” (Glejzer, 1997, p. 106).2 For Augustine, that ontological ground involves
the relation between logos and the Word, which correlates to a process of the inner
word’s incarnation in speech. Thought is inner speech, which carries with it an intention
– inner speech is always turned toward something. Outer speech, likewise, intends
towards something, even if it’s not limited to constatives (Augustine is well aware of
language’s performative dimension). Speech, which is the primary form of language, is
the inner word made flesh:
Thus in a certain fashion our word becomes a bodily sound by assuming that in which
it is manifested to the senses of men, just as the Word of God became flesh by
assuming that in which it too could be manifested to the senses of men. And just as our
word becomes sound without being changed into sound, so the Word of God became
flesh, but it is unthinkable that it should have been changed into flesh. It is by
assuming it, not by being consumed into it, that both our word becomes sound and that
Word became flesh (Augustine, 1991, p. 411).
The inner word is not in a language; in order for the linguistic incarnation to take place,
the inner word congeals into an image of words the subject intends to speak (in a
2 The  project  of  his  essay  is  to  find  in  the  scholastic  tradition  an  “ontological 
radicalism” consonant with psychoanalysis, “where epistemology is itself an effect of 
an ontological impossibility, an impossibility that the scholastics recognized as real 
in  knowledge  and  language”  (Glejzer,  1997,  p.  109).  For  Glejzer,  this  is  a  broad 
historical  project:  “It  is  this  ontological  radicalism  at  the  basis  of  medieval 
epistemology  that  Descartes  will  eventually  bracket  and  dismiss,  a  radicalism  that 
will  then  similarly  serve  as  the  basis  of  Lacan’s  return  to  Freud.”  Of  course, 
Augustine is not a scholastic, and his work clearly preceded the scholastic tradition. 
Still,  Glejzer’s  insight  is  helpful  here;  the  “ontological  radicalism”  he  locates  in  the 
scholastics  is  already  there  in  Augustine’s  philosophy  of  language,  and  thus  his 
historical project could easily incorporate Augustine. 
 
particular language) before being fully materialized (Augustine, 1991, p. 410). Thus,
thought is not informed by conventionally conditioned linguistic categories. There is a
formal transformation that occurs before the signifier-signified relation can be
established. But the product of this transformation is one of lack, since we are stuck
signifying things with words (as opposed to things, as God is capable of) (Augustine,
1991, p. 418).
For Augustine, a true word, beyond the sense of the purely conventional, would be a
correlation between its outer and inner meanings (which is something Wittgenstein
simply couldn’t see). Purely conventional meaning is a meaning of lack, since its signifier
names objects outside of the position of enunciation (the subject), thus in some sense
killing the object. The signifier itself, indeed, only exists insofar as its use aims at the
void or lack in the center of the object; we would not need words if we were not in some
constitutive way estranged from the wholeness of the object. But “God can be
understood to have an everlasting Word co-eternal with himself” (Augustine, 1991, p.
419). This is what our (outer) words intend toward, although they necessarily fail, since
the subject cannot be complete in the way the trinity is in its absolute simplicity.
What Wittgenstein ignores is the structural position of the inner word in Augustine’s
account. That is, signs and the power of speech are an effect of the inner word, which is
unconventional and thus exists outside of the word-meaning (and signifier-signified)
correlation. In his Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough, Wittgenstein appears to turn
Augustine’s, ‘Let me know thee, O my Knower; let me know thee even as I am known’,
into one of many substanceless “call[s] to God on every page of the Confessions”
(Wittgenstein, 1979, p. 1). That is, Wittgenstein’s worst mistake is to ignore the
performative aspect, both of the ‘call to God’ in providing the bedrock of a theory of
language, and the concomitant production of (conventional) truth by language. As seen in
the previous passage from De Trinitate, the relationship between the inner and outer word
is analogous to the relationship between the Word of God and Christ incarnate. By
emptying Augustine’s appeal to God and truth of all theoretical content, he reduces the
central authority around which the collection of signifiers circulate (and occupy their
positions in language) to a mere gesture or ritual that obscures the edifice of language
itself. In order to read Augustine’s theory of language in a way that takes seriously his
claims about truth and the self, it might be helpful to find a similar, secular account of
language to which we can then apply Augustine’s role of the inner word in a way that’s
theoretically significant. Thus, we move to Lacan.
To Lacan (and Back)

For Lacan, reality is structured for the subject according to a system of symbols; it is a
seemingly coherent structure of differential relations that apply at a parallel to a set of
signifiers. However, there is necessarily a lack around which the system circulates. In
language there are signifiers without signifieds, and there is an unreality in experiential
space that covers up its inconsistency. This is a necessary byproduct of the (linguistic)
subject, which is nothing but the inconsistency of reality itself. That is, subject (and
therefore the enunciation) is a void, not a positive ontological entity; it is nothing but the
unrest of the concept, the impossibility of any entity being equal to itself. So the subject

occurs because (symbolic3) reality is out of joint, or in some structural sense deficient.
This is reconciled by the Big Other, a symbolic authority to which the subject (often
unknowingly) appeals.
The Big Other is not just something the subject appeals to, though; it is something it is
shaped by:
Is it with the gifts of Danaoi (the Greeks who laid siege to Troy) or with the passwords
that give them their salutary non-sense that language, with the law begins? For these
gifts are already symbols, in the sense that symbol means pact and that they are first
and foremost signifiers of the pact that they constitute as signified, as is plainly seen in
the fact that the objects of symbolic exchange - pots made to remain empty, shields too
heavy to be carried, sheaves of heat that wither, lances stuck into the ground - all are
destined to be useless, if not simply superfluous by their very abundance (Lacan, 1977,
p. 61).
So it is not just the content of the signifier (which is arbitrary) or its correlation with a
signified (and all such interrelated correlations) that’s sufficient for language but a sphere
of relations between subjects that provides a means for which language can be used, and
which the linguistic subject cannot opt out of without losing language itself. It appears
most obviously in the case of the ‘gesture meant to be refused,’4 which has no content
other than the establishment or maintenance of relations between two subjects.
One of Lacan’s early (1954) seminars deals explicitly with Augustine’s theory of
language; entitled De locutionis significatione, and initiated by Father Louis Beirnaert,
here Lacan claims that “the linguists, in as much as we are entitled to make up one large
family through the ages bearing this name, linguists, have taken fifteen centuries to
rediscover, like a sun which has risen anew, like a dawn that is breaking, ideas which are
already set out in Augustine’s text [De Magistro], which is one of the most glorious one
could read” (Lacan, 1991, p. 249). Indeed, Lacan goes as far as to say that “[everything] I
have been telling you about the signifier and signified is there,” including the structure of
the relationship between signifier and signifier and signifier and signified, and the
inconsistencies and asymmetries around which performativity is generated.
3  For  our  purposes  it  is  sufficient  to  equate  the  ‘symbolic’  with  conventional 
language. 
4 It may  be good etiquette to offer my bed to a weary traveler,  and it may be good 
etiquette for him to refuse – this exchange, however, is not neutral, and it confirms a 
particular social arrangement. 
Lacan interprets a section of Augustine’s dialogue on “the difference between
communication by signals and the exchange of interhuman speech” as establishing “the
element of intersubjectivity” in language (Lacan, 1991, p. 250). For Augustine, speech is
“a teaching,” not reducible merely to a play of information but instead tending toward a
notion of “truth.”5 When, in the dialogue, Augustine and Adeodatus encounter the word
nihil in their analysis of a line from the Aeneid, they show that “it is impossible to deal
with language by referring the sign to the thing term by term” (Lacan, 1991, p. 252).
What this ‘truth’ must ensure is precisely the intersubjectivity beyond the domain of one-
to-one correspondences between sign and referent, the bedrock that breaks one out of the
“dialectic of pointing,” since if “every pointing is a sign, it is an ambiguous sign”6
(Lacan, 1991, p. 253).
Lacan’s reading of the ambiguity of signs in Augustine’s theory is not merely a “semantic
ambiguity,” but also a “subjective ambiguity”: “[Augustine] admits that the very subject
who is telling something very often does not know what he is telling us, and tells us more
or less than he means to” (Lacan, 1991, p. 260). Thus, linking the subject to language
through an account of the subject’s relation to the linguistic structure becomes imperative
here. For instance, in other places, Lacan found the following anecdote of Augustine’s to
be filled with uncommon significance: “I have myself seen jealousy in a baby and know
what it means. He was not old enough to talk, but, whenever he saw his foster-brother at
the breast, he would grow pale with envy” (Augustine, 1961, p. 28).
He repeatedly invokes this story as a representation of subject formation in the ‘mirror

stage’ (where the infant first sees his reflection as himself and other than himself). The
following features that can be drawn from this passage are most significant: a rivalrous
encounter with a double that precedes language and a desire for a lack (which becomes
the objet petit a7).
There is a fallenness in the case of the child (and ultimately in the case of the ‘split’
subject of language), desiring forbidden fruits and milk. Where this is allegorized into a
conflict between man and God, Lacan transmutes it into a dialectic between subject and
other. If one cannot explain language without subjectivity (or, at the very least, the
subject’s constitutive relation to reality and the other through social language), then a
theory of language merges with a theory of the subject. Thus, originary social rivalry and
recognition is tied to linguistic convention – this link is implicit in Augustine, but rather
explicit for Lacan.
But it’s important to recognize that it isn’t the theme of jealousy that lends the anecdote
its Lacanian significance (and accounts for its re-citation throughout his work). The key
5 In addition, Lacan notes that, for Augustine, “Prayer here touches on the ineffable. 
It does not belong in the field of speech” (Lacan, 1991, p. 250). This is a further point 
missed by Wittgenstein. 
6 “Because if the rampart is pointed out to you, how are you to know that it really is 
the rampart, and not, for example, its rough quality, or its green, grey, etc?” 
7  Though  this  term  is  not  important  here,  it  is  another  way  to  describe  the 
symbolic’s  lack  (and  it’s  ultimate  equivalent  with  the  linguistic  subject).  “It  is 
precisely because the object a is removed from the field of reality that it frames it” 
(Alain‐Miller, 1984, p. 28). 
observation is indeed that, in the structure of the Confessions itself, the tension of early
subject formation is followed by an account of language and social formation:
Augustine’s trajectory from the preverbal to the verbal parallels the odyssey of the
mirror-stage child from the specular I to the social I, from the narcissistic conflict with
a fraternal double to the symbolic order where the paternal law (“the will of my
elders”) prevails. Yet, despite occasional ambiguities in Lacan’s own formulations, the
mirror stage does not chiefly designate a moment or event in the progress
(developmental) narrative of the child. Rather, it involves a psychical structure that is
also an existential situation (Barzilai, 1999, p. 149).
It is often difficult to recognize the full ontological implications of a discourse

(psychoanalysis) that is so often associated with the mechanics of ‘the cure’, but the
Lacanian reading of Augustine fixates not so much on the anecdote in order to serve
those territorial interests but to elucidate the subject’s constitution in relation to the
synchronic structure of language and the symbolic (or the social I).
For both Freud and Lacan, the step from the original pleasure-ego to subjectivity proper
(and to the constitution of objective, symbolic reality) is the step of incorporating the
difference (the gap) that separates the I from the outside, from what is not-I. In other
words, “the negativity included in the subject at its very affirmative constitution is not
this or that negativity (exteriority), but the very form of negation which reveals here its
real structure, namely and precisely that of with-without” (Zupancic, 2012, n. pag.). The
negativity, in fact, is the subject, in the sense that it is its constitutive limit, between
language and language’s outside (“and it is this limit that constitutes that peculiar third
dimension, which is neither outside nor inside, neither subject nor object, neither
something nor absence; rather, it has the precise structure of the ‘with-without’”8
(Zupancic, 2012, n. pag.)). The structure of the subject, then, as void or limit is intimately
related to language itself, the space of which is shaped according to its absence – “the
symbol, psychoanalytically speaking, is repressed in the unconscious” (Lacan, 1977, p.
80).
The point is that the with-without is what invests the place of the subject with its
social/conventional/linguistic ‘I’.9 And further, it is what allows us to understand the
8  ‘With‐without’  is  used  because  of  its  paradoxical  suggestion  of  an  ontological 
category that both is and is not – it is because of its effects and is not because of its 
unrecognizable place outside of symbolic reality. 
9  “It  is  therefore  in  the  very  sacrifice  of  the  certainty  and  self‐presence  of  the 
classical  subject—in  its  de‐centering,  we  might  say—that  Augustine’s  "I"  is  born” 
(Mennel, 1994, p. 322). In her essay, Susan Mennel argues that Augustine’s theory of 
subjectivity,  as a  deconstruction  of the “metaphysics of  presence” and  the classical 
constitution of language itself. Language is artificial, but it is sutured by a Master
Signifier that points the way toward the more ‘essential’ word that belongs to no
language. It is no mere coincidence that one of the primary examples of the Master
Signifier in Lacan is God, which admits of no temporal, empirical, enfleshed signified to
point directly to. Thus it is not just that artificial language is somehow ontologically less
than its non-linguistic supplement (the inner word, using Augustine’s terminology), but
that it contains a structural gap that points the subject in the direction of something
outside of itself (the logos).
Wittgenstein’s conception of language for Augustine only considered the symbolic realm
of communication proper; Augustine and Lacan demonstrate the relation between the
Symbolic and the Real, between language as an edifice of signifier relations and that
which precedes language, is not in a language, cannot ever be in a language. Of course,
the Real for Lacan differs from what it would be for Augustine (ultimately, God and the
Word, but purely in relation to language, the inner word). For Lacan, the Real is indeed
that which cannot possibly be symbolized, because the subject was separated from it the
moment it (the subject) attained language. In fact, it need not be an actual state the
subject was ever in, but a principle, a structural impossibility introduced by language,
which is necessarily incomplete.
To fully understand lack in the field of language, it is important to read Lacan as differing
in an important sense from the kind of post-structuralist language found in Derrida. In
both cases, something in the field prevents there from being a ‘metalanguage,’ but for
Derrida this is because the text is ‘framed’ by something significant, whether it’s the
reader’s method of interpretation or a more widely construed general (surrounding)
discourse. There is no ‘pure’ text that doesn’t contain an element of interpretation, or
distance towards the object of interpretation itself. That is, the text that contains
differance (which is every text) contains a distance from itself inside of itself. The truth of
a text is nothing more than an effect, an effect of the play or style (or pleasure) of its
discursive articulation.
One of the implications of this picture is that any canonical significance of a text
evaporates with the assumed link between signifier and signified. Brenda Deen Schildgen
notes that:
In Jacques Derrida’s version of deconstruction, because the subject (for instance, the
creator or writer) of the text is absent, its referent must also be absent…[Because the
text] is inscribed and therefore open to a diversity of interpretations, there is nothing
fully present in its signs. Rather the trace is not the signified but another signifier
Knowing  Subject,  leads  to  a  paradoxical  affirmation  of  self  in  its  very  destitution. 
How is this the case? “[The] self here is affirmed instead in the alien Hebraic name of 
faith.  Faith,  [Augustine]  comes  to  argue,  is  an  essential  mode  of  knowing  in  the 
world of time (which is also the world of différance) because faith accepts absence.” 
We might respond here, in proper Lacanian fashion, that the faith that generates the 
self is faith in the efficiency of the signifier. 
inviting the reader to make meaning of it; any intrinsic meaning formerly associated
with any text is a fiction created by interpreters of the trace. Because the “voice” of the
text is absent once it has been inscribed on a page, any notion of the presence of the
word, or the Presence of the Word, is only a creative possibility, for the “logos,” the
meaning or voice of the text, its revelation, in traditional terms, is absent (Schildgen,
1994, p. 384).
Schildgen locates in De Doctrina Christiana an “answer” to the deconstructive assault on

meaning in signs; while Augustine would agree that words or signs are ambiguous, first,
for Augustine, “words in Sacred Scripture, at least, link back to the originating ‘Word,’”
and second, and most importantly for us here, “Augustine advances a method for
interpreting written ‘signs’ on the grounds that they are social utilities and are intended to
communicate: the meaning of verbal signs can be bridled by the context, tradition, and
history with which they are aligned; words belong to communities of linguistic and
symbolic signification; as a consequence, words can be interpreted incorrectly”
(Schildgen, 1994, p. 388).
To make sense of this, however, while fully retaining one’s skepticism towards
‘metalanguage,’ an entirely different presentation of the relation between signifiers (and
between signifiers and signifieds) is needed. And indeed, Derrida’s presentation is
ultimately irreconcilable with the Lacanian picture, which emphasizes metaphor instead
of metonymy. That is, if the Derridean approach demonstrates the constant motion, or
metonymic sliding of signifiers that have no end or foundation in a stable structure, the
Lacanian alternative is the metaphorical ‘cut’ that supports the play of metonymy (Lacan,
1977, p. 141). For Lacan, to even think of language as something at all significant, as
conventional and in some constitutive way separate from the reality it attempts to name
(though it indeed fails), it must contain a structure that prevents its collapse into things.
This is the Hegelian point, that there must be an element of negativity that separates
representation from the Absolute (Real), or else the subject (of language) would be
unnecessary and dissipate as a position that can regard things (or name things) as other
than itself. Language thus contains a lack at the center of its structure, a Master Signifier
that has no signified. It is the point de capiton10 that sutures the field of signifiers, that
lends it its consistency and holism while repressing (or merely hiding, covering over) the
fact that language is ultimately in-consistent.
When metalanguage is ‘deconstructed,’ it’s shown to produce internal gaps where the
position of (a speaker’s) enunciation is subverted, so that no utterance in language says
exactly what it’s ‘supposed’ to say. But the position from which this is recognized, that
the process of enunciation always subverts the enunciated content, is the position of
metalanguage itself. That is, even the Derridean position, despite itself, recognizes the
irreducibility of the subject of language, the void from which the enunciation is offered.
This is the same recognition that Augustine makes when he says that we see through a
10 Or ‘quilting point’. 

mirror11: we are not looking at a reflection of God when we seek Him, we are the mirror
itself, and thus are always incomplete with regard to Him. The problem with self-
awareness is that it is de-centered according to its position, and thus cannot fully
appropriate itself or its utterances. To make sense of this we must read Augustine’s claim
that the mind, in considering itself, turns its inner gaze upon itself as something that’s
bound to fail, since as subject one can’t fully wrap oneself around oneself.12
For Lacan, truth plays a constitutive role in language because both constatives and
performatives aim at the truth laid down by the Big Other (which is public and communal
property and recognized socially). The performative attempts to transform a situation in
the eyes of the Big Other: saying ‘I do’ at a marriage ceremony does not transform the
situation of the couple in isolation, but succeeds only insofar as it is recognized by the
community. The constative names a state of affairs successfully only insofar as another
(real or presupposed) linguistically capable gaze is there to confirm the proposition – real
or presupposed, because like Foucault’s panopticon, the Big Other operates even if there
is no actual subject occupying its place.
This is why a Lacanian reading of Wittgenstein’s critique would point out that
Wittgenstein is inaccurately painting a picture of language that works only for psychotics:
the psychotic, as defined by Lacan, is the one who never acceded to the domain of the
symbolic law (Lacan, 1977, p. 164). That is, he cannot grasp the performative function of
language, and is not ‘touched’ by the gaze of the Big Other. Language there is simply a
one-to-one correlation between signs and meanings; he can utilize the complex structure
of language, may be able to speak and write very well indeed, but he is not fully caught
in language. To complete a full picture of language, one must posit the Big Other in some
form, must recognize a gaze or space which grants the power of the performative, or even
simply the social gesture. For Augustine, however, this is not just some fantasmatic
space, something necessarily posited but that lacks positive being; this is the inner word,
mirrored after God’s Word, the true source of conventional language and temporal reality
itself, respectively.
Here, it is the fictional or conventional which sustains (temporal) reality, though there is
an important ontological difference between Lacan and Augustine: beyond convention is
pure void for the former, and the fullness of God for the latter. This does not pose a
problem for a theory of language specifically, since all that matters is that there is
something else, and that the symbolic (and therefore temporal) subject is incomplete. It
does preclude, however, certain extensions of the comparison: for Lacan, were the subject
to be in the full presence of the Real, his world would dissolve (thus the Real is the
impossible for the subject). Lacan’s theory of language does not seem to be amenable to a
theology, unless it’s a Gnostic one (though that is, of course, not the point here). Indeed,
11  “[What]  we  have  been  trying  to  do  is  somehow  to  see  him  by  whom  we  were 
made  by  means  of  this  image  which  we  ourselves  are,  as  through  a  mirror” 
(Augustine, 1991, p. 407). 
12  Though  it  is  outside  the  scope  of  this  project,  we  can  see  here  how  the 
incompleteness  of  the  subject  (which  mirrors  the  incompleteness  of  language  and 
indeed of reality itself) leads to a difference between Lacan and Augustine on love. 
For Augustine, love occupies a harmonious trinity (lover‐object‐love), whereas with 
Lacan  we  must  conclude  that  the  object  of  desire  is  the  missing  part  of  ourselves 
that would serve to complete us, except for the fact that he/she doesn’t exist. 
this allows us to recognize an important methodological difference. The Master Signifier
is an ‘incarnation’ in symbolic language of the failure of the very possibility of full
(complete) signification. Lacan moves from the symbolic structure to the Real (from the
failure of signification to the remainder), where Augustine moves from the real of the
inner word to outer language. If nothing else, this provides an explanation for any
possible application of each ‘system’: Lacan is ultimately concerned with the psychic
effect of, and an explanation for, language, whereas Augustine’s real desire is to know
God Himself.
What I have not attempted to do here is develop a rigorous parallel between the
complexities of Lacan’s theory of language and Augustine’s. There is no doubt that their
projects are different: for one, Lacan is not interested in a theory of mind, and Augustine
did not have the luxury (or burden) of having Freud or Saussure to work out of. Further,
to translate their terms (inner/outer word, Big Other, the Real, etc.) directly into one
another would be all too convenient, and would require subordinating the thought of one
thinker to the other in the name of strategy. Instead, by showing the similarities between
Lacan and Augustine on language (and the subject of language), the structural categories
that in some sense transcend the signifier relations, I have traced a path out of the
(supposed) deadlock that Wittgenstein attaches to Augustine’s theory. And more
importantly, if one is predisposed to shrug off Wittgenstein’s criticism in the first place,
the comparison helps to originate and develop a purely structural (and thus secular)
analysis of language that draws on (even if it didn’t originate with) Augustine.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my reviewers at Language & Psychoanalysis for the invaluable
comments offered during the stages of this essay’s revision.
Biography
Zachary Tavlin is a Ph.D. candidate in English at the University of Washington. He
received his M.A. in Philosophy from Louisiana State University, and his B.A. in
Philosophy from The George Washington University. His areas of research include
phenomenology, Marxism, psychoanalysis, and film. Forthcoming publications include
essays and book chapters on Shakespeare and Levinas, and the fiction of Don DeLillo.

References
Alain-Miller, J. (1984). Montre a Premontre. Analytica, 37, 27-31.
St. Augustine, & Pine-Coffin, R. S (1961). Confessions. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin.
St. Augustine, & Green, R. P. H. (1995). De Doctrina Christiana. Oxford, UK:
Clarendon.
St. Augustine, Hill, E., & Rotelle, J. E. (1991) The trinity. Brooklyn, NY: New City.
Barzilai, S. (1999). Lacan and the matter of origins. Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press.
Bergvall, A. (1993). The theology of the sign: St. Augustine and Spenser’s legend of
holiness. Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 33, 21-42.
Glejzer, R. (1997). Lacan with scholasticism: Agencies of the letter.” American Imago,
54, 105-122.
Lacan, J. (1977). Écrits: A selection. New York, NY: Norton.
Lacan, J. (1991) The seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book I: Freud’s papers on technique
(1953-1954). New York, NY: Norton.
Mennel, S. (1994). Augustine’s ‘I’: The ‘knowing subject’ and the self. Journal of Early
Christian Studies, 2, 291-324.
Schildgen, B. D. (1994). Augustine’s Answer to Jacques Derrida in the De Doctrina
Christiana. New Literary History, 25, 383-397.
Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical investigations. New York, NY: Macmillan, 1953.
Print.
Wittgenstein, L., & Rhees, R. (1979). Remarks on Frazer’s goldenb. Atlantic Highlands,
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Zupancic, A. (2012). Not-Mother: On Freud’s Verneinung. E-Flux, 33. Retrieved from
http://www.e-flux.com/journal/not-mother-on-freuds-verneinung/

Σύµβολου: An Attempt toward the early Origins, Part 1
Giuseppe Iurato1
University of Palermo
Abstract
This is the first of a two-part paper in which I would like to propose some possible
hypotheses on the early origins of symbolic function, which is the most typical feature of
human being, based on disavowal mechanism. Briefly recalling the main stages of the
history of symbolism, it will be possible to lay out many of its theories within the
framework that we wish to outline with this work, this first part of which is mainly
concerned with the basic psychodynamic notion of disavowal and its possible
applications, above all in regard to fetishism.
Introduction
One of the main aims of this paper is try to clarify the vexata quæstio on symbolism, its
nature and origins. Our original motivation for this comes from mathematics and its role
in the sciences: following Eugene P. Wigner (1960), how does one explain the
effectiveness2 of this formal and abstract language in natural sciences, like physics? The
history of mathematics unfortunately comprises many cases of great mathematicians who
have had alternating severe psychotic states with moments of normality and that, out of
respect of them we do not quote here.3 Now, mathematics intimately relies on symbolic
and segnic function, so that it may shed light on these typical human features. Due to this,
we would like to put forward the hypothesis according to which the symbolic function
might be the outcome of the dialectic interplay between two concomitant Ego’s
subagencies always present in every human being which, in turn, would be the outcome
of an Ego’s splitting mainly according to the Freudian (1938, 1949, 1999) thought based
on disavowal mechanism4 and supported by the thoughts of other authors, above all H.
Nunberg, D. Lagache and J. Lacan. Our hypotheses are historiographically supported by
a considerable research literature which we have taken into account in drawing up this
paper. The theoretical framework here outlined will turn out to be of some usefulness to
explain, from a psychodynamics perspective, other already existent ideas on
mathematical thought from a more properly cognitive viewpoint, like those based on
embodied mathematics. Indeed, just this last perspective will be much more coherent with
1
  Correspondence  concerning  this  article  should  be  addressed  to  Giuseppe  Iurato, 
Department  of  Physics  and  Department  of  Mathematics  and  Computer  Science, 
University of Palermo, Palermo, Italy, E‐mail: giuseppe.iurato@unipa.it
2  On account of the reality. 
3  See Rosen (1954). 
4 This last psychic mechanism has been, wrongly in our view, quite underestimated 
according  to  Freudian  work,  as  Laplanche  and  Pontalis  (1973)  pointed  out,  who, 
inter  alia,  would  want  to  consider  it  a  general  psychic  mechanism  of  the  psychic 
formation and development of every human being. 
what herein is established which, among other things, is based on the notion of bodily
image, with related phenomena, as formed from the psychodynamics viewpoint. In this
first part, we retrace the main theories on symbolism from a psychodynamics standpoint
as well as outline the main psychodynamics elements underlying the notion of Ego’s
splitting upon which we will build our framework. In the second part, we will apply what
herein is said to mathematical and physical contexts. From our discussion, it will turn out
that a primary role is played by the formation of bodily image also as regards the general
symbolism theory because, for instance, it may explain the possible origin of syntactic
and semantic structures thanks to the possible relations established amongst its
component elements together with the possible meanings assigned to them. In short, our
main idea around which revolves this two-part paper is as follows. Putting the disavowal
mechanism as a general psychic mechanism, its outcomes are some basic subagencies of
Ego agency, to be precise the Ideal Ego subagency and the agency system Ego’s Ideal –
Super-Ego, from whose dialectic interaction takes place most of psychic life, including
symbolic function as well as degenerative behaviours. In particular, the disavowal is
closely involved in the bodily image formation which takes place during the well-
determined pregenital phases of human psychosexual development (mainly, from the anal
phase to the Œdipus one) in the discovery of the primary sexual gender difference from
which the child, when she/he gives pre-eminence to symbolic elaboration, is able to build
up her or his personal bodily image, instituting relations (syntax) between its component
elements together with the assignment of related meanings (semantics). In such a way,
the child acquires her or his own syntactic and semantic tasks and abilities moulded
according to her or his strong emotional experience in seeing and discovering the external
realities given by the sexual apparatuses of both sexes put in reciprocal comparison. In
doing so, it will therefore be possible to account for the inseparable5 relationships
between syntax and semantics (at least, in normality) as well as to explain consequent and
fascinating relationships between mathematics and physics. The paper is therefore
devoted to debating on this main idea.
First historical outlines on symbolism

According to Eco (1981) and Petocz (2004), to date, it is not entirely clear what the
unambiguous origins of the symbolic function of human thought are, although various
explanatory theories have been proposed to this purpose. In this regard, Eco claims that
the concept of symbol is epitomizable as a kind of “content’s nebula”, mainly because of
its polysemic nature. According to semiotic theory, a symbol falls into the wider class of
signs (according to T. Todorov, 1982a, 1982b). From this perspective, then, U. Eco
defines a sign as anything that can be taken as “significantly substituting” for something
else, or rather, a sign is something (whether a natural or an artificial object) which stands
in place of something that is absent. Historically, the semiotic perspective broadly goes
from C. S. Peirce to F. de Saussure, K. Bühler and R. Jakobson (see Todorov, 1982a,
1982b). Peirce gave the first, famous tripartite division of the sign in icon, index and
symbol, the last being the case in which the relation between signifier and signified is
arbitrary; thus, the major systematic manifestation of symbols is in language. In contrast,
F. de Saussure held that it is the sign which is arbitrary, and the symbol which is not
arbitrary or “motivated” and so does not properly belong to the field of semiotics.
Therefore, according to de Saussure, the symbol is no longer a kind of sign, the affect
starting to be a fundamental element in characterizing it, so making the set of symbols
5  According to Lolli (2000), the syntax is always in searching for the semantics. 

different from the set of signs; both sets are overlapping one with another, the symbol
being sometimes opposed to the sign, other times classified as a sign. This separation of
domains, mainly due to the occurrence of the emotional-affective element, gives rise to
two main entities, namely those of conventional symbols (the signs) and non-
conventional symbols (those not classified as signs). The continuous slipping back and
forth between them is the main feature of that vexata quæstio of the dualism between sign
and symbol; in turn, the latter often refers to another crucial question, that of the
conscious versus the unconscious nature of symbols. There is no doubting the fact that
conventional symbols are entirely conscious, whereas strong disputes exist regarding the
nature of non-conventional symbols. It is almost a matter of fact that the latter have a
double unconscious and conscious nature, so that the critical point relies on the possible
relationships between them. With Peirce and de Saussure, a prominent role is played by
the relation between signifier and signified, the primary form of symbol being given by
metaphor.6 Later, these last perspectives will be compared with the psychoanalytic ones,
above all with Lacan’s work. In this paper, we simply want to put forward the possible
hypothesis according to which the fundamental Freudian disavowal mechanism, together
with the consequent splitting of Ego’s agency, might be considered to underlie the
possible early origins of this fundamental function which essentially characterizes
(according to E. Cassirer) all the normal and pathological human thought functions. A
theory of symbol should be considered first from a psychoanalytic perspective, contrarily
to a theory of sign which mainly pertains to the cognitive context, all this, in turn,
referring to the primary distinction between conventional symbols and non-conventional
ones. Only after having given a psychoanalytic basis will it be possible to consider a
more cognitive viewpoint built up on the former; these two perspectives are often closely
intertwined with each other. In this paper, we want to start just from the first
psychoanalytical paradigm, the Freudian one, which epistemologically lies at the heart of
every further psychoanthropological trend (according to C.G. Jung, M. Klein, J. Lacan,
C. Lévi-Strauss, etc.).
Disavowal, fantasy and phantasy

The primary aim of this work is to put the disavowal process, considered as a
fundamental universal psychic mechanism (d’après Anna Freud and others), at the basis
of symbolic function. In pursuing this, as we will see later, the various already existent
theories on symbolism could, in turn, get a more coherent and systematic classification if
laid out within this framework based on the disavowal mechanism. According to the last
Freudian thought, delineated in his last work7 in 1938 and which starts with the analysis
of fetishism, disavowal might be contemplated as a possible universal psychic
mechanism which nevertheless, in some cases, might give rise to degenerations in
paraphilia. We here follow a suggestion by J. Laplanche and J. B. Pontalis (1973)
according to which disavowal might be considered a general psychic mechanism
involved in the formation and development of every human being, although this idea has
already been considered by other authors, like Anna Freud and Melanie Klein. To be
precise, disavowal has been considered a fundamental mechanism in the formation and
structuration of the Ego agency, which is the one that presides in all the secondary
psychic processes and relationships with reality. Following Rycroft (1968a), in
6  And this will be the central view of symbolism of C.G. Jung and H. Silberer (1971).  
7 See Freud (1938, 1949, 1999), above all its final Part III. This is the main reference, 
together with Laplanche and Pontalis (1973), herein followed. 
psychoanalysis the imagination is included in the realm of fantasy, where it forms a
domain in itself, called phantasy according to English terminology. Therefore, phantasy
is meant to be an imaginative activity which is at the basis of every human thought and
sentiment. Each psychoanalytic trend agrees in considering the conscious mental activity
as supported, accompanied, maintained, animated and influenced by unconscious fantasy
which starts in childhood, has primarily and originally to do with biological relationships
and processes, and gives rise to symbolic elaboration (see Rycroft, 1968b). Above all, the
Kleinian school assumes unconscious fantasy to be an unavoidable means between
instinct and thought (see Segal, 1981, 1991). Likewise, the orthodox Freudian theory
locates fantasy into the Id. Furthermore, it is a general statement that (creative)
imaginative activity entails the participation of a non-verbal unconscious fantasy (see
Beres, 1950, 1957). According to Isaacs (1952), fantasies are the primary content of
mental unconscious processes, while unconscious fantasies (understood as the primary
content of unconscious mental processes) primarily concern the body and represent the
instinctual aims toward the representation of objects. These fantasies are, in the first
place, the psychic representatives of libidinal and aggressive instincts. The adaptation to
reality and the secondary process require the support of concomitant unconscious
fantasies. All that shall justify what will be said later.
On Ego’s splitting: first outlines

Through a rapid analysis of the psychoanalytic literature on fetishism (see also Khan
Masud, 1970, 1979), it will turn out that in the fetish formation process the first forms of
condensation and displacement mechanisms take place, which are the two main
psychodynamic processes underlying any symbolic formation. In the following, fetish
formation will be compared too with that of the transitional object. Their paths meet
frequently, until they become different to each other with psychic maturation,
distinguishing between two possible choices, namely normality and pathology
(perversions8). However, these two entities, fetish and transitional object, have many
common points amongst them in the first stages of human psychosexual development. At
the same time, according to the last 1938 Freudian thought, an Ego’s splitting with the
formation of two subagencies takes place, which will be called Ego’s Ideal and Ideal Ego
(see Laplanche & Pontalis, 1973; Chasseguet-Smirgel, 1975). Nevertheless, both these
names are due to Hermann Nunberg (1932) and Daniel Lagache (1961) and not to
Sigmund Freud who explicitly introduced and used only the name Ego’s Ideal in his 1914
work On Narcissism to denote an autonomous intrapsychic formation to which the Ego
refers itself to evaluate its effective realizations or representations (see Galimberti, 2006).
Nevertheless, Freud himself, in the On Narcissism (of 1914) as well as Group Psychology
and the Analysis of the Ego (of 1922) and The Ego and the Id (of 1923) speaks too of an
Ideal Ego (Idealich) but identifies it with the Ego’s Ideal (Ichideal) and this, in turn, with
the Super-Ego, even if in some points of his discussion a certain distinction between them
seemed already to be possible. The Ego’s Ideal has narcissistic origins going back to the
primary identification and which precede all further object relations. Such a narcissistic
state is lost thanks to parents criticisms toward the child. The interiorization of such
criticisms gives rise to agencies of self-observation. Subsequently, other authors, such as
H. Nunberg (1932, 1955, 1975), J. Lacan (1961) and D. Lagache (1958), retook two such
Ego’s agencies as distinct from each other. On the other hand, as already said above, in
8 In this regard, it is useful to remember the incisive Freudian expression according 
to which “perversions are, in a certain sense, the ‘negative’ of neuroses”.  
the last period of his work, Freud himself implicitly started to distinguish between these
two Ego’s subagencies. Their interplay might be the interpretation key to all the
following psychic behaviour. We will return later on to these last arguments.
Some epistemological considerations

The general epistemological problematic concerning the psychoanalytic disciplines and
their foundations is well known to be complex and intricate, and is included in the wider
problematic concerning the long-standing difficult relationships between
Geisteswissenschaften and Naturwissenschaften (d’après W. Dilthey). According to
Caramelli9 (1984, 1985) and Carotenuto (1982), every psychological theory is the result
of the subjective and individual experience of its author, so that each of these will
represent aspects of psychic reality that might elude others (gnoseological relativism).
Therefore, only the whole composite framework made by all the possible theories of
psyche will provide, at a given historical moment, a certain knowledge framework of
human psyche. Thus, psychoanalysis also has a deep historicist10 and pluralistic
dimension as a doctrine’s field (which we might call a historicist gnoseological
relativism), and, hence, we may use different theoretical frameworks to coherently
explain a given psychic phenomenon without meeting contradictions. In this sense, we
could use in a concomitant manner elements of different authors’ theories, provided that
the minimal requisites of non-contradiction and coherence are respected. On the other
hand, in some respects, this last relativistic and opportunistic epistemological stance is
much nearer to the last epistemological anarchism ideas of P. Feyerabend (see
Abbagnano, 1998) that the author himself would want to consider as related to a general
gnoseological method. In this paper, for instance, we will mainly follow the last Freudian
thought as exposed in Freud (1938, 1949, 1999), but, at the same time, we will refer to
many other thoughts systems which may have relationships (of coherence, analogy,
confirmation, support, integration or completion) with the main ideas herein exposed and
mainly based on the Freudian disavowal mechanism. However, a beautiful and
emblematic example of the validity and application of this epistemological stance is
provided by the same Jacques Lacan’s theory which is an almost unique systematic and
organic framework making harmonic and coherent use of different theories like
anthropology, linguistic, literature, arts, etc., as well as the thought system of many other
authors.
On symbolism: first considerations

On etymological meaning
According to Abbagnano (1998) and Galimberti (2006), the word symbol derives from
the Greek noun σύμβολου (with Latin transliteration sӯmbolum), this from
σύμβᾰλλω, in turn derived from the verb συμβάλλειν (with Latin
transliteration sým bállein) which, in composition, means “throw together”. It is
characterized, like the sign, by an a priori postponement which, on the one hand, includes
9  We  have,  above all,  taken  into  account  the  works  of this  author  because they are 
closest to the methodological aims that we would like to follow here. 
10 Which, in turn, is nearer to the common area given by the non‐void intersection 
between the evolutionistic epistemology ideas and the genetic epistemology ones. 
the symbol in the sign’s order as a specific case of it (as a conventional symbol), whereas,
on the other hand, it is opposed to the sign itself because the latter has a predetermined
relationship with what it denotes or connotes (aliquid stat pro aliquo11), whereas the
symbol, instead, in evoking its corresponding part, refers to a given reality which is not
decided by some form of convection but by the recomposition or assembling of a whole
(in respect of its original etymological meaning, as a non-conventional symbol). Roughly
speaking, there is no rigid link between a symbol and what it symbolizes. Nevertheless,
the relationships between sign and symbol are never well delineated in a clear manner.
The psychoanalytic perspective might yet provide useful clarifications, above all that of
the Kleinian trend and that of the British middle group headed by Donald W. Winnicott,
if one takes into account the early etymological meaning of the term “symbol” (see also
Laplanche & Pontalis, 1973), i.e., the one that refers to the “assembling of a set of
things”. Following Petocz (2004), which quotes a Lévi-Strauss consideration, the concept
of meaning is so difficult to define perhaps because of its intimate reciprocal connection
with the notion of symbol. On the other hand, the noun σύμβολου, i.e., a “tally”,
originally referred to each of the two corresponding pieces of some small object which
contracting parties broke between them and kept as proof of identity when rejoined
together.12 That meaning subsequently expanded to include a diversity of meaning such
as other kinds of tokens, seal, contract, sign, code, etc. In this regard, see also Laplanche
and Pontalis (1973).
On interpretation and symbolism: a first sight

For our purposes, it is fundamental to sketchily consider the essence of the conception of
symbol from the semiotic stance. Indeed, according to Eco, the symbol is considered as a
“decision”, since the symbolic world always and everywhere presupposes an invention’s
process applied to a recognition, i.e., one finds an element which might assume, or has
already assumed, segnic function, and decides, then, to see it as the projection of a
portion having a sufficiently imprecise content. On the other hand, following Laplanche
and Pontalis (1973), when one speaks of mathematical or linguistic symbols, any
reference to a natural relationship or to an analogical correspondence is excluded, that is
to say, the typical segnic denotation or connotation relation (for instance, in the Ferdinand
de Saussure meaning) does not hold for them: to show a very elementary algebraic
example, the following relation among integers, , may have
13
completely different symbolic meanings depending on whether it refers to the set of
integers or to the set of congruence classes modulo , namely ( ). Therefore, its
meaning depends on the given contextual interpretation, as we will see later. Following
Rycroft (1968a, 1968b), in psychoanalytic theory a sign points out the presence of
something more or less directly identifiable, whereas a symbol refers to something
different from what it is. The importance of a symbol derives just from that something
11  In other words, “something stands for something else”.  
12  So  that  its  meaning  refers  to  something,  like  an  object,  and,  through  its 
fragmentation,  to  the  idea  of  a  link  or  bond.  This  will  be  coherent  with  what  is 
pursued in this paper about bodily image formation in fetishism, Ego’s splitting and 
their relations with symbolism. 
13 Which must be considered as distinct from the segnic meaning of its components, 
such as  and  , which refer to the conventional symbol class. We will return 

later to such questions in the second part of this two‐part paper. 
else in which it puts off, which is reachable only through a suitable interpretation. Signs
directly reveal their meaning, whereas symbols require a kind of decoding through a
correct interpretation. This is the main difference between sign and symbol, which is
emphasized only within the classical psychoanalytic theory while in other contexts (cf.
Peirce’s theory of sign) such a distinction is more elusive. From our point of view, if one
wants, for example, to try to explain why mathematics is a suitable interpretative
language for natural sciences, it is not possible to prescind from the psychoanalytic
perspective on symbolism. Indeed, whilst the connection between the sign and the thing
to which it refers has a conscious nature, the symbol establishes an unconscious
replacement, through displacement and condensation, of an image, an idea or an activity
with another. This last viewpoint will be clearer later when we discuss C. Rycroft’s work.
Moreover, for further discussion on mathematical symbolism, see the second part of this
paper.
Some linguistic aspects

However, we are not interested here in all the theories on symbolism14 but only in those
which, in a certain sense, might be explained through (or correlated to) the line of thought
that we wish to delineate in this paper, i.e., the one centred on the Freudian disavowal
mechanism. Namely, we will consider those theories according to which the symbol is
considered to be different from the sign, both in the lack of a conventional and rigid order
which sets up the possible signifier-signified relationships (according to de Saussure) and
in the fact that the symbol is conscious whereas the symbolized is unconscious.
Nevertheless, in what will follow, the comparisons between segnic and symbolic
functions will be frequent, since their domains are inseparable although distinct from one
another, as already said in the previous sections. From our point of view, we consider the
symbolic function as preceding the segnic one, and having deep unconscious roots; the
latter, then, will start from the former.15 Our intention, therefore, is to focus on the first,
ancestral nucleus of such a symbolic function, whose early origins we would want to
bring back to certain crucial aspects of the last 1930s Freudian thought (see Freud, 1938,
1949, 1999) on human psychic evolution. Following Rycroft (1968a, 1968b), E. Jones
was one of the first scholars of symbolism from the orthodox viewpoint. According to
him, symbolism is always the result of an intrapsychic conflict between the repressing
tendencies and the repressed material. Only those repressed objects that cannot be
sublimated need to be symbolized, so there is a close relationship between the
sublimation processes and the symbolization. Nevertheless, Freud himself wasn’t so
radical in considering symbolism as exclusively confined to the primary process as Jones
was. Indeed, in his last work in 1938, Freud reached the conclusion that the linguistic
symbols used in dreams have mainly an unconscious meaning and originate during the
earliest language development stages. So, Freud presumed that the symbolic function was
in some respects correlated with the formation of the verbal linguistic one.
14 However,  brief  outlines  on  some  of  them  will  be  delineated  in  the  following 
sections. 
15 This is coherent with what is said above about the mainly unconscious nature of 
symbol and  conscious  nature of  sign.  In  this regard,  then,  it will  not  be possible  to 
prescind  from  the  notable  Lacan  œuvre  which,  inter  alia,  is  based  on  the  previous 
work of Ferdinand de Saussure and Roman Jakobson.  
On psychoanalytic symbolism
According to Segal (1991), it is not possible even minimally to approach the subject of
fantasy (hence, of creativity) and of dreaming without considering the unconscious
symbolism; this is because both are closely intertwined and interconnected between them.
Freud distinguished between a conscious symbolism (such as a metaphor) and an
unconscious one. Again following Rycroft (1968a, 1968b)16 and Segal (1991), within the
Ernest Jones framework on symbolism there is a close connection between the
sublimation process and symbolic formation, which is the pivotal key to understanding
any creative process, the latter being present where the former is missing. According to
Jones, there are some main features of symbolism, namely: (i) the symbolic process is
completely unconscious; (ii) each symbol represents ideas of Self and of the own family,
as well as birth, love and death phenomena; (iii) each symbol has a constant meaning and
is the result of an intrapsychic conflict between the repressing tendencies and the
repressed material; (iv) only the repressed material needs to be symbolized; and, finally,
(v) the emotional charge which invests the symbolized object has not been able enough to
perform that qualitative modification given by sublimation. Therefore, according to
Jones, symbols have nothing to do with sublimation. However, many points of Jones’s
theory of symbolism have been reworked out, amongst others by Melanie Klein,
loosening their strong constraining character. As already said in the previous sections,
even Freud wasn’t as rigid about symbolism as Jones was, for instance allowing many
possible meanings for the same symbol. Freud himself, then, was aware that at the basis
of dream and artistic activity was unconscious fantasy, hence symbolic thought.
Sublimation is a psychic process provided by Freud for trying to explain the higher
human thought functions, thereafter counted as a general defence mechanism by his
daughter Anna Freud (1937),17 and yet quite neglected by psychoanalysis which has not
still given a coherent theory of it (see Laplanche & Pontalis, 1973). Given the close
relationships of sublimation with secondary processes, perhaps it would be possible to
bring back the segnic function to the sublimation process rather than the symbolic one
whose process is quite different from the former, albeit both are intertwined with one
another. For instance, according to Rycroft (1968a, 1968b), symbolization and
sublimation are two psychic processes which have displacement as a common energetic
exchange mechanism. Rycroft (1968a) states that sublimation is considered to be strictly
related to scopophilia (roughly speaking, the pleasure of watching, one of the basic
childish drives, from which derives the so-called epistemophilia (see Rycroft, 1968a), or
else, general human intellectual activity is a sublimation of this, which follows from
childhood inhibitions of sexual curiosities. Moreover, according to the author, all
sublimations depend on symbolization, while all the Ego’s development depends on
sublimation. In turn, the splitting process (upon which is also based disavowal) has
mainly to do with the Ego’s development. In short, from what has been said so far, it is
evident that there are links between the symbolism and sublimation processes and human
psychosexual development. In this paper, on the basis of what has just been said, we
would like to point out some possible relationships between the symbolic function and
the disavowal mechanism, the latter supposed to be, d’après Laplanche and Pontalis
(1973), a general psychic formation process (closely related to Ego’s structuration) not
only relegated to pathology, as already Freud himself had hypothesized in his last notable
16  See also Bott Splillius et al. (2011). 
17    She  considered  sublimation,  splitting  and  disavowal  as  comprising  the  set  of 
defence mechanisms of the Ego (see Rycroft, 1968a). According to her, sublimation 
is concerned with normality.  
1938 work, and subsequently accepted by his daughter (and other post-Freudians) as a
normal defence psychic mechanism.
On the viewpoints of Charles Rycroft and Hanna Segal

Charles Rycroft (1968b) gave a useful and original interpretation of symbolism. This is
neither a hereditary18 nor exclusive prerogative of the unconscious realm. The symbols
are the outcomes of a cathexis displacement from the images of the objects of primary
interest (like those involved in the primary identification) to the images of objects
perceived in the external world. Once formed, a symbol may be used either by primary or
secondary processes. When a symbol is used by a primary process, its meaning becomes
independent from the object that it originally represented; hence, it will be involved in
fantastic processes, like neuroses and dreams. When, instead, a symbol is used by a
secondary process, it will continue to represent a suitable object of the external world and
will become part of conscious and unconscious imaginative processes that promote the
development of a certain sense of reality. Rycroft follows Melanie Klein and Isaacs
(1952) in assuming that the sense of reality is supported and favoured by fantasy. Rycroft
distinguishes between fantasy that intensifies reality and fantasy that maintains illusory
(or neurotic) substitutes for reality. To the first, he gives the specific name of
imagination, which is a fundamental component to evaluate reality. According to Rycroft
(who, in turn, starts from the previous work on symbolism of L. S. Kubie and M. Milner
– see Rycroft, 1968b), the words are classified as symbols closely related to
consciousness that favour the secondary processes. The words are also closely related to
object relations because verbalization is a form of communication between objects. On
the other hand, within the Kleinian framework, Hanna Segal (1991) also made further and
original contributions to symbolism (see also Bott et al., 2011). On the basis of her
clinical material drawn from the analytic treatment of psychotic patients, she identified
two main symbolic functions. The first function is called symbolic equation and relies on
the basis of concrete schizophrenic thought: in it, the symbol is equated with the
symbolized object, up to the point where it is lived as identical to the latter. In this regard,
Segal refers to a clinical case in which a psychotic patient, at a certain moment in his life,
broke off to play the violin; when he was asked why, he curtly replied: “Do you want
maybe that I publicly masturbate?” Now, playing a violin has the psychoanalytic meaning
of masturbation, so that, for him, a violin is a penis, so that playing a violin is
masturbating and therefore it cannot be done in public. The intuition of the second
function, however, came from a clinical case regarding a neurotic. It has been called
symbolic representation and has to do with the true symbolism of normal thought.
Through it, the symbol represents the object but must not be entirely equated to it. If one
dreams of playing a violin, then the violin, yes, represents the penis, but distinguished
from it, so that one may personify unconscious fantasies of masturbation and, at the same
time, remain quite distinguished to use the violin to play in such a manner to separately
represent a sexual act. The passage from the first function to the second one is well
illustrated by a clinical case treated by Claudine Geissman (see Segal, 1991) and
references therein) in regard to a psychotic eight-years-old girl who initially wasn’t able
even to speak but rather was only interested in everything that had a spherical form, as
well as showing aggressiveness and violence toward everybody and everything which
resembled a human being (like dolls, etc.). By means of the transfer of the child to an
analyst, Geissman stated that such objects were the concrete counterparts of maternal
18   Unless one accepts the hypothesis of a collective unconscious, like Jung. 

body or analyst, so that all this framework built up by the girl was turned toward a
maternal figure and her body. Gradually, through the analysis, the child started to speak
in an ever more complex manner and to make drawings which had balls as subjects, the
first indications of a slow formation of a symbolic representation of parts of the maternal
body. Moreover, the child gradually started to join partial objects or fragments into a
whole one, until she was able to put herself into a relationship with other children as well
as to read, speak and write. So, after having considered other case studies, Segal was
persuaded that the first symbolic function would correspond to the paranoid-schizoid
position (concrete symbolism) while the second one would correspond to the depressive
position (depressive symbolism). Segal states that, in the symbolic equation, the symbol
substitute is felt to be the original object. The properties of the substitute are not
recognized or admitted. The symbolic equation is used to deny the absence of an ideal
object or to control a persecutory one (like a phallus), and belongs to the first stages of
the Ego’s development.19 The real symbol, available for the sublimation and favourable
for the development of the Ego, is, instead, felt to be representing the object whose
characteristics are recognized, respected and used. It develops when the depressive
sentiments predominate over the paranoid-schizoid ones and when the separation from
the object, the ambivalence, the guilt and the loss may be experienced and tolerated.20
Once this is done, it will also be possible to come back to symbolic equations. The
general symbolic formation will determine the ability to communicate because every
internal and external communication is made by symbols, so that when schizoid disorders
take place in the object relations, the communication capacity will also be damaged. For
instance, in psychotic patients, symbols, being uniquely conceived in a concrete manner,
do not have any emotional charge so they cannot be felt by others, making effective
interpersonal communication impossible. In regard to the two symbolic functions above,
Segal states too that there exists no symbolic function without the remaining one, that is
to say, there will be a prevalence of one of these but without fully eliminating the other
one. These two symbolic functions operate next to one another, with reciprocal influence
and possible regressions to primitive stages. And this last fact might also be related to the
indivisible binomial made by the symmetric and asymmetric thought of Matte Blanco’s
theory (see Iurato, 2013). One of the greatest achievements of a depressive position is
having given to the human individual the ability to integrate and to encompass most of
the primitive aspects of her or his experience, comprising primitive symbolic equations.
This last point is of fundamental importance for a creativity theory according to the
Kleinian standpoint (and others). Once the right passage has been made from concrete
symbolism to a depressive one, then it will be possible to perform a further step towards
abstraction, for instance with verbalization. However, from this, we cannot deduce that
pure abstraction thought is necessarily an indication of mental health. Indeed, this
capacity might also be the outcome of a splitting (of the Ego) in which abstract thought is
fully devoid of emotive meaning or charge, as in psychotic states (see also Matte
Blanco’s thoughts in this regard). For instance, in schizophrenic patients, very often there
is simultaneity between a coarsely concrete symbolization and complete abstractions
devoid of emotive (and, in some cases, of intellectual) meaning.
19 And this point is of fundamental importance from our point of view based on the 
disavowal  mechanism  which  is  considered  by  Melanie  Klein  to  be  like  a  normal 
psychic mechanism. 
20  Within this position will take place the basic psychic function of the separation of 
opposites. This point has also been stressed by R. Money Kyrle (see Segal, 1991).  
On the development of Freudian libido: a brief sketch
Herein, for completeness and for giving a semblance of organic unity to the whole
treatment, we briefly outline the main points of Freudian psychosexual development, with
slight additions and contributions due to other authors which must be understood
according to the above-mentioned epistemological considerations.
On object relationships
The strong instinctual reduction due to homination (that is to say, the passage from
primates to the genus Homo), gave rise to the human existential problem of managing the
consequent instinctual energy content which has supervened as a result of such a drive
deconstrainment. The human being is characterized, as well as by needs, by desire which
is roughly meant as a sort of incoercible psychic tension which has to be necessarily,
internally or externally invested. So, for the human being, it is indispensable to find
objects21 upon which to direct, or to invest, such an energy content. The consequent
relations established with these objects (animated or not) are generically called object
relationships. These were explicitly introduced by post-Freudians, first of all by the
Melanie Klein school, even if the notion of object relation was already present, in nuce,
in the Freudian notion of cathexis of a drive (or instinct) which characterizes the
inescapable human disposition to make interrelationships with something else (which
belongs to the external or own internal world), said to be the cathexis object, which, in
turn, will be represented by the individual in various manners. The Freudian cathexis has
a source, an object and a drive destination (or instinctual aim) as fundamental
constitutive elements. The first one is the (bodily) zone, or the somatic apparatus, in
which the related libido excitation takes place and originates. The second one is the
means by which or with which the drive may reach its (instinctual) aim. It is the
necessary correlative of the drive destination, and is mainly determined by the personal
history (above all, infantile) of the individual but constitutionally is quite undetermined
since it may be either a person or a partial real or fantasmatic object. Finally, the third one
is that particular and necessary activity, or that specific action, due to the push of the
drive itself to obtain the given satisfaction, and that often is oriented and sustained by the
fantasmatic or imaginative elaboration of the individual herself or himself. Hence, we
sketchily have
These last notions are the generalization of the correlative ones of sexuality: for instance,
the object corresponds to the sexual object, that is to say, the person who exerts the
sexual attraction, while the aim corresponds to the sexual satisfaction, that is to say, it is
the action due to, or raised by, drive pushes. The first (bodily) Ego formations mainly
involve a correct balancing of the primary narcissism, a regulation of primary
identifications (through introjection-projection mechanisms), and a beginning of a sense
of reality and of a corporal image of Self.
21 We could consider the notion of object or thing in the wider philosophical sense. 
In psychoanalysis, then, a restricted sense is assumed mainly correlated to the post‐
Freudian  notion  of  object  relation  (see  Laplanche  &  Pontalis,  1973;  Galimberti, 
2006).  
The psychosexual development
In Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (of 1905), besides outlining the above notion
of object cathexis, Freud worked out the main lines of his celebrated theory on the stadial
or phasic development of human sexuality which is meant to be mainly driven by the
agency of Id (or Es), which is understood as the place of all the instincts ruled by the
principle of pleasure. According to him, human sexuality22 starts at birth (if not before, in
the prenatal phase) with two main stages, the pre-Œdipus stage, from birth to about four
years old, and the Œdipus stage, from about five years old to about seven years old, to
carry on with the latency phase, from about eight years old to about twelve years old,
hence with puberty (or the genital phase), from about thirteen years old to about fifteen
years old, ending with adolescence, from about sixteen years old to about eighteen years
old. In turn, the pre-Œdipus stage includes: a first oral phase, from birth to about one year
old, in which the somatic Ego23 begins to form with the recognition of the first partial
objects together the establishment of the incorporation’s instinct; an anal phase, from
about the first year to about two years old, in which a self-erotic narcissistic attitude
prevails – it begins to express the first ambivalence phenomena and to structure the basic
tasks of restraining and expelling faeces; a phallic phase, from about two years old to
22  In  what follows,  we  refer  to  the basic work of Piscicelli (1994).  In  it,  there is  an 
exposition  of  Freudian  human  psychosexual  development  integrated  with  post‐

Freudian thought, above all the  Kleinian one and that of its followers. For instance 
(see Piscicelli, 1994), it should be necessary to distinguish between a first monadal 
phase  (mainly  prenatal)  and  subsequent  symbiotic  phase  (which  includes  the  oral 
and anal ones; this term is due to M. S. Mahler) where the essential psychosomatic 
mother‐child  relationship  prevails  and  through  which  begin  to  form  and  be 
structured  the  first  cores  of  the  Self,  above  all  by  means  of  a  basic  dyadic  relation 
(moulding  onto  the  previous  mother‐child  relationship).  In  these  phases,  the  first 
differentiations  between  the  Self  and  the  Other  will  begin  to  take  place,  the  first 
ambivalence  and  opposition  tendencies  will  appear  through  the  formation  of 
opposite pairs (that is to say, the first germs of philosophical pairs), like love‐hate, 
cohesion‐splitting,  desire‐refusal,  approaching‐estrangement,  and  so  on.  In  short, 
the  dialectic  thought  which  plays  a  primary  role  for  the  consciousness  begins  to 
form.  The  transduction  of  the  psychosomatic  organization  and  contents  into  the 
elements  and  functions  of  thought  requires  a  long  procedure  made  by  variously 
combined experiences mainly driven by a good mother. This is due to the fact that 
human thought mainly has its origin in the transferring of satisfaction of needs from 
an  initially  autarchic  system  toward  relational  exchange  procedures  (including 
object relations, anaclitic and diaclitic phases of object dependence, etc). These last 
will  reach  their  highest  performance  and  definition  with  the  advent  of  paranoid‐
schizoid and depressive Kleinian positions, which are indispensable for recognizing 
objects  as thinkable entities. In the actuation and in the subsequent overcoming of 
these  positions,  the  above‐mentioned  symbiotic  mother‐child  relationship  will  be 
essential, which is mainly psychosomatic in its incipient phase and whose dynamics 
will  be  explicated  through  object  relations.  From  what  has  just  been  said,  the 
importance played by Kleinian thought with its subsequent evolutions is clear.  
23 Following Vegetti Finzi (1976), the maternal figure, with those deeply ambivalent 
feelings which she arouses, is the first core around which gradually the child’s Ego 
starts to be organized along with, at the same time, her or his ability to recognize the 
other.  
about three years old, in which, at first, sexual gender differences, in their structural and
arrangement order, are noticed (although, since the oral phase, both baby boys and baby
girls have already discovered their own genitals), to be then able to recognize the Other
together with the coming of some attitudes toward sublimation phenomena; and, finally, a
urethral phase, from about three years old to about four years old, in which a bladder
sexuality prevails, and which is often parallel to the phallic phase. Self-eroticism, which
initially characterizes the incipiency of the pre-Œdipus stage, gradually evolves, within
the familiar triangulation, toward hetero-directed sexual forms which will lead to the next
Œdipus stage. In it, castration anxieties, penis envy phenomena and first formations of
Super-Ego agency will prevail; it will finish with the crucial apical advent of the so-
called Œdipus complex. In the next latency phase, after the relevant Œdipus complex, a
general sexual quiescence phase takes over in which the major part of libidinal activities
and fantasies are repressed or sublimated24 but not fully eliminated. Thereafter, the fast
increase of pubertal neurophysioendocrine activity leads to a libido re-emersion with a
new and fast phase of sexual development, corresponding to puberty. During this, a kind
of recapitulation of the previous phallic and anal phases takes place, along with a revival
of sexual interest with related conflictual recrudescence at first toward the parents (as in
the previous Œdipus complex), then oriented (unless there were previous pathological
fixations) toward other cathexis objects (in general, extra-familiar) with the coming of
adolescence. So, in a certain sense, a definitive disposition will be reached, at first sexual
then characterial, of the human personality, through the overcoming of late adolescence.
These are, very briefly, the main points of the Freudian framework of human
psychosexual development, in which we will lay out most of the considerations of this
paper. We want to highlight this as the first five to six years of life are very decisive in
the formation of human personality, as is now almost unanimously recognized (see
Mastrangelo, 1975).
On phallic phase
For our aims, it is important to further highlight other aspects of the phallic phase. As
already said above, in the phallic phase the organization of genital pleasure prevails and
there are predominant interests in the sensitivity of those organs whose functionality is
particularly present from about three years old to about five years old. From this period
hereafter, no matter what their possible origins, this excitation is focused and invested on
the genitals, the sexuality being lived only in a self-erotic manner. In this phase, the
drives revolve around the crucial question of having or not having the phallus (in its
highest symbolic meaning) which is the main reference point and drive orientation line
for both sexes. It is the central executive organ of the whole libido: for instance, it will be
the high unit of the genital function which melts in itself all the partial drives coming
from the various erogenous zones25. This last phenomenon has been called erotic anfimix
by S. Ferenczi (see Nunberg, 1932, 1955, 1975). But, in this period, ithe first notions of
24 During this period of sexual development, there is little clarity about the possible 
relationships  between  repression  and  sublimation  mechanisms.  Moreover,  as 

already  said,  little  attention  has  been  paid  to  the  general  sublimation  mechanism, 
from the work of Freud until now (see Gay, 1992).  
25 This will play a fundamental role in the formation of bodily image as we will see 
later when discussing fetishism. 
space and time also begin to form,26 which also assist the formation of the corporal
scheme, notwithstanding their categories are still not well defined from the logical
viewpoint. Furthermore, in this phase, not all children are able to identify gender genital
differences, although this phase is mainly focused on seeing and hearing in order to
identify the possible cathexis objects of desire, remembering these through their symbolic
meanings. In this phase, children develop the narcissistic conviction that there exists a
unique genital organ,27 the phallus, which they attribute, erga omnes, to every human
being, no matter their sex, and even to inanimate objects (see Nunberg, 1932, 1955,
1975). Children are unable to imagine human beings as devoid of a phallus, which is
understood as a mere narcissistic pleasure organ. Such a prevalence of the image of the
phallus as a symbolic representation of the potential of pleasure is also interpretable as a
chiasma effect28 between psychosomatic-emotive experiences and psychomental ones
ruled by logical thought. Therefore, the psychosomatic aspects, which manage the
emotions, act too as a support for the subsequent logical thought functions and for the
exchange of affects.29 As already said, in this phase children are persuaded that only one
genital organ exists, the phallus, noting too that there exist only the castrated and the not
castrated, so coming on to configure the castration fantasy which has an archetypical
26 According to K. Lorentz (see Oliverio, 1982), the abstraction’s capacity for human 
thought has a phylogenetic origin during that particular homination period in which 
the  advent  of  prehensility  and  the  development  of  visual  capacities  –  which  have 
taken  place  thanks  to  the  conquered bipedalism  (or  standing position) – allow the 
first manual exploratory activities (like the analysis of internal cavities, and so on). 
Nevertheless,  to  the  formation  and  structuration  of  bodily  Ego,  a  primary  role  is 
played  by  sensorial  developments  linked  to  the  cephalic‐caudal  maturation  which 
precedes  the  neural‐muscular  one.  So,  olfaction,  vision  and  hearing  are  the  first 
corporal physiological determinants contributing to the formation of bodily Ego (see 
also Greenacre, 1971).   
27    This  explains  why  this  phase  is  often  mentioned  as  well  as  the  unique  genital 
phase.  
28 With this term, one refers to those particular situations in which certain different, 
and often opposed, aspects or dimensions of a given phenomenon undergo a kind of 
intimate union into an indissoluble interlacement where they will configure almost 
in  a  reciprocal  interrelation  of  mutual  exchange  and  biunivocal  influence,  until 
reaching symbiotic forms of mirror equivalence. This meaning is due to an extension 
of that related to the chiasmus of rhetoric figures. On the other hand, Freud himself 
claimed,  in  his  1927  paper  on  fetishism,  that  traumatic  amnesia  (which  leads  to 
screen  memories,  in  turn  closely  related  to  these  chiasma  effects)  could  be 
considered to be a paradigm of fetish formation. To be precise, the fetish, as a screen 
memory,  would  be  the  outcome  of  the  awareness  of  a  traumatic  real  experience 
whose  related cathexis’  energetic  charge  gives the distance  between such a  screen 
and the real event. Its amount provides an estimate for the severity of the impact of 
the conflict related to the given perturbative situation. In this regard, see Greenacre, 
1971),  where,  inter  alia,  the  author  paid  much  attention  to  screen  memories, 
believing  them  to  be  the main path by which early  preverbal  experiences  could be 
traced.  
29  And,  often,  inversions  of  these  relationships  (that  is  to  say,  psychosomatic 
reifications of thoughts) are at the interpretative basis of the perversions.  
source and a universal character.30 In this phase of the unique genital organ, sexuality is
put into a crossroad of confusion because both parents are indistinguishable from each
other and both are fantastically thought to have a penis. This confusion will flow on into
the latency phase, to be then elaborated according to those different meanings that the
male and female genitals will assume. The lack of a female penis induces a catastrophic
fear due to the great importance assigned, in this phase, to the penis; the vagina could
then be the result of a punishment. So, we are at the culmination of the Œdipus complex,
with the prevalence of the castration one. The unity of the castration complex in both
sexes is conceivable only on the basis of a common and primary assumption, precisely
the one that states the equal and notable importance played by the castration’s object
(namely, the phallus) both for baby girls and baby boys. The posed problem is the same
for both, that is to say, have or do not have the phallus. Following Laplanche and Pontalis
(1973), this castration complex is met in every (psychoanalytic) analysis, and every
human being experiments with it. Greenacre carried out notable studies on this universal
character of castration anxiety and human predisposition to anxiety (see Greenacre,
1971). Furthermore, following Nunberg (1932, 1955, 1975), it is possible to distinguish
between a passive and an active castration complex in relation respectively to the desire
to lose or to the fear of losing the unique genital. The manner in which the child copes
with her or his infantile sexuality and solves the castration complex will determine her or
his character and psychic health. Such a complex is present, in more or less severe forms,
in almost all psychic disorders. Finally, following Nunberg (1932, 1955, 1975), in this
phase takes place the first separation of opposite pairs which, in the previous phases,
were characterized by a full ambivalence: for instance, in the oral phase, the ambivalence
appears joined into a unique act, becomes particularly strong in the next anal phase in
which each libidinal desire must be meant as its opposite, while in the phallic one the two
opposite tendencies hold next to one another. This last dialectic dynamic tension between
opposites will be of fundamental importance for symbolic formation.
The Freudian disavowal mechanism and fetishism: brief

outlines
First historical outlines on disavowal
Following Roudinesco (1995), Freud, for the first time, used the term negation or
denegation31 (Verneinung) in 1917 after a personal re-elaboration of the term negative
hallucination due to H. Bernheim following his 1914 reclassification of psychoses,
neuroses and perversions based on castration theory made in On Narcissism: An
Introduction. The term was then explicitly used by Freud in 1925. By Verneinung Freud
meant a verbal mechanism through which the repressed material is recognized in a
negative manner by the subject, but without being accepted. Together with this
mechanism, Freud also used the term disavowal (Verleugnung) to indicate the refusal, by
the subject, to recognize the reality of a negative perception, like the lack of a female
penis. The Verneinung is connected to a mechanism typical of neuroses, whereas the
Verleugnung is connected to a mechanism typical of perversions. Finally, according to
Freud, the Verdrängung is a term which indicates a mechanism related to repression.
Thereafter, in the Wolf Man (of 1914), Freud also used the term Verwerfung to indicate
30  R.  C.  Bak  has  also  pointed  out  a  possible  universal  character  of  female  genital 
organs (see also Greenacre, 1971). 
31  This denomination was due to J. Hyppolite in the 1950s. 

the rejection of a reality presented as non-existent, and to be meant as distinct from the
previous ones. In France, there were some heated debates about the relations of the term
scotomization, first proposed by E. Pichon-Rivière in 1928 to indicate an unconscious
mechanism through which a subject makes disappear from the consciousness those facts
which are unpleasant, with the previous terms. For instance, R. Laforgue proposed
consideration of scotomization as comprising either the Verleugnung and another
repression mechanism typical of psychoses, whilst Freud considered it as distinct both
from Verleugnung and Verdrängung. Laforgue wanted to indicate an annulment of a
perception whilst Freud wished to keep the perception within a framework supported by
negation, that is to say, not complete closure of a perception in front of a
misunderstanding of reality, but rather activation of a perception put between a
denegation and a repression. In a nutshell, the real problem consisted in the lack of a
specific term to indicate the rejection mechanism typical of psychoses. In short, even
Freud had a certain moment of uncertainty between all these terms, Verleugnung
(disavowal), Verdrängung (repression) and Verneinung (negation), in relation to
psychosis mechanisms. Finally, as we will see later, Freud opted for denegation or
disavowal. Disavowal (or denial, of the reality), is a term that Sigmund Freud began to
explicitly use, in a specific sense, after the paper entitled The Negation (of 1925), until it
attained a more general sense in the last of his works, namely Abriß der Psychoanalyse32
(see Freud, 1938), even if such a primary notion did not have a definitive
characterization, for which reason it will be retaken by his followers to be studied more
deeply. According to Octave Mannoni,33 Freud began to implicitly use the notion of
disavowal after the 1890s in discussing the concept of splitting the Ego, both these
notions being closely related to one another. As stated above, disavowal (Verleugnung) is
different both from negation (Verneinung) and from repression (Verdrängung), as will
become clear later. Following the last Freudian ideas exposed in Freud (1938, 1949,
1999), we may consider disavowal as a fundamental psychic mechanism which relies on
the primary basis of any other possible relation with the external reality. Indeed, in this
last work of his, Freud fully re-examined all his previous ideas about the Ego agency and
its functions in the light of the fundamental psychic process of Ego’s splitting. Freud
(1938, 1949, 1999) also states that a certain degree of fetishism is part of normality,
particularly during romantic love.34 The above-mentioned Freudian work The Negation
(of 1925) has played a primary role in subsequent studies on consciousness. Following
De Mijolla (2005), negation dramatizes a situation of interpretative conflict and is related
to a dialogical situation. Negation, unknown at the level of the unconscious, needs to be
situated on a secondary level, and we can gain access to it only by way of the symbol.
The study of the interrelation between oral instinctual motions and the establishment of
negative and affirmative behaviour has been further investigated in the works of R. A.
Spitz (1957). Then, following Akhtar and O’Neil (2011), any elementary content,
32  This  last  (partially  unfinished)  work  may  be  considered  as  Freud’s  spiritual 
testament  of  his  (orthodox)  doctrine,  in  which  he  almost  axiomatically  tried  to 
delineate the main lines of his theory as it historically evolved from its first ideas to 
the final form together with some of its unsolved questions to which the author was 
not able to give a relevant answer.  
33 See the Introduction to the Italian translation of Freud (1938), that is to say, Freud 
(1999). 
34  As  we  will  see  later,  this  psychic  phenomenon  is  almost  ubiquitous  in 
childhood  if  laid  out  in  the  Winnicott’s  framework  of  transitional  objects  and 
their relations with fetish. 
according to Freud, becomes conscious only in its inverted and negated forms.
Subsequent epistemological analysis (see Chemama & Vandermersch, 1998) have shown
that 1925 Freud’s work On Negation dwells above all on the disavowal mechanism and
not only on the negation one, so that his main theses were much more related to the
former rather than to the latter. On the other hand, with his notion of splitting of the Ego,
Freud showed his 1938 last thoughts especially concerning fetishism and psychosis. It
also enlightens his ideas on the basically non-unified structure of the ego. He moreover
focused on the question of the possible relationships between the Ego agency and the
reality, introducing another model different from that of repression and of the re-emersion
of the repressed content, by establishing the notion of disavowal as a specific psychic
mechanism regarding Ego agency (see Bokanowski & Lewkowicz, 2009). The initial
motivations for the introduction of the disavowal mechanism were mainly due to attempts
to give a satisfactory explanation of the psychoses which remained until then out of the
psychoanalytic theoretical framework which was mainly turned to explain the neuroses.
Roughly speaking, disavowal is a defence mechanism through which the individual
denies the recognition of painful experiences, impulses, reality data or aspects of herself
or himself. Such a notion should be understood as a first generalization of a particular
initial denial, precisely the one experienced by the individual in recognizing that
traumatic perception which consists in the occurred awareness of the lack of a female
penis, with consequent supervention of the related castration anxiety. According to the
initial 1924 Freudian conception, at the first impressions of this lack of a penis, the baby
boy disavows this absence and imagines to see, in an equal manner, a penis which
formerly there was but that afterwards has been cut off (castration). According to Freud
(1938, 1949, 1999), this process seems to be quite normal and widespread in children, but
it might become dangerous in adult age giving rise either to a psychosis or a paraphilia,
even if, in these last cases, it is quite unclear in what specific manner these take place.
Girls, instead, reject the acceptance of the facto datum of their own castration, persisting
in the conviction of having a penis, being therefore forced, later, to behave as if they were
males (penis envy35). Subsequently, this first disavowal conception was extended to all
the painful perceptions which, contrasting with the pleasure principle, lead to not
recognizing the reality and to transforming it, through hallucinatory modalities, to fulfill
the desire. Fetishism, besides homosexuality, is the most frequent amongst the paraphilias
(see Greenacre, 1971) even if it is the most difficult one to diagnose due to the fact that it
is asymptomatic.
Towards the Ego’s splitting

The 1927 Freudian paradigm of fetishism, which was initially laid down to explain the
formation of fetishes by means of castration anxiety due to the observation of the lack of
a female penis, has gone beyond the context of sexuality, due to the rigour with which it
was formulated by Freud himself. Subsequently, such a paradigm underwent further
improvements until a definitive 1938 model centred around the basic notion of Ego’s
splitting (see Freud, 1938, 1949, 1999). According to the latter, most people overcome
such a castration complex through symbolic elaboration,36 accepting the gender sexual
differences, whereas those who do not overcome such a complex will have neurotic
developments with possible paraphilic degeneration (see also Piscicelli, 1994). In
35 On this, Lacan will speak of the child as a prolongation of the mother penis. 
36  The  degree  of  this  is  directly  correlated  with (and  proportional  to)  the  emotive 
content associated with it.  
fetishism, the perception that disproves the infant’s belief in a female penis is not rejected
but is, as some say, displaced upon an object, the fetish. It therefore does not imply a
hallucination or an alteration of the representation of reality (like in psychoses), but
simply it repudiates the reality. After having detected the lack of a female penis, the child
has, in a certain sense, modified its initial belief about the female penis, retaining it and,
at the same time, abandoning it (Aufgegeben). He or she believes that, despite everything,
the female has a penis, even if this is no longer that of before, because something has
taken its place or replaced it, that is to say, it has been named a “symbolic substitute” for
it upon which it will be possible to cathexis the desire to avoid the strong anxiety’s
pressures due to the castration principle. But, in doing so, the child inevitably goes into a
conflict created by the load of the real undesired perception of a penis lack against the
force of a counter-desire opposed to this, thereby reaching a basic ambivalence whose
resolutive compromise will be possible only thanks to the action of the unconscious
thought which dialectically operates through its own primary processes. 37 In short, the
fetish is, yes, a symbolic substitute for the phallus, but it is not always an iconic
reproduction of it. Such a fetish reflects, at the same time, the denial and the affirmation
of the female castration, this also corresponding to the coexistence of two opposite
attitudes in respect of the fetish, which Freud tries to explain by means of a particular
psychic mechanism, called Ego’s splitting (Ichspaltung). This splitting takes place when
the child undergoes a conflict between the initial instinct’s claim (Anspruch) and the
objection made by reality (Einsprunch), but does not choose either one or the other, or
else chooses both. In such a manner, the formation of the Ego’s synthetic function is
perturbed. Thus, to sum up, a fundamental characteristic of fetishism is that it allows
reality to be recognized and, at the same time, disclaimed. It gives rise to the fundamental
creation of opposites whose separation, thanks to this splitting mechanism (if correctly
operating), is at the basis of first consciousness formation.38 Such a mechanism, however,
is different from the psychotic one because the latter is a mere and simple repudiation of
the reality39 which is never recognized. Nevertheless, the (paraphilic) fetishist cannot
avoid a degenerative Ego splitting when this splitting does not give rise to that
compensative symbolic elaboration recalled above.
From fetishism to Ego’s splitting

On Ego’s splitting, fetishism and transitional phenomena
By means of the disavowal mechanism, Freud glimpses the origins of an intrasystemic
Ego’s splitting40 (Ichspaltung) through which, within the Ego agency, two distinct and
conflictual psychic attitudes take place of which one takes into account the reality denied
by the other, and substitutes it with the content of a desire. Or else, following Laplanche
and Pontalis (1973), through this intrapsychic division, an Ego’s splitting takes place both
37 See Smirnov (1970) and Khan Masud (1970, 1979). 
38  The  constitution  and  separation  of  opposite  pairs,  as  already  said,  is  a 
fundamental  and  characterizing  task  for  consciousness  (see  also  Laplanche  & 
Pontalis,  1973).  Here,  we  have  discussed  such  psychodynamic  processes  from  the 
Freudian perspective, but they also play a fundamental role in the Jungian theory of 
consciousness (in this regard, see also Iurato, 2012). 
39  Which has mainly external sources. 
40 Which should be kept distinct from the analogous notion related to schizophrenia 
in which it is preferable to use the term dissociation.  
into a part which observes and into a part which is observed. This last perspective is
widely but implicitly used by Freud in his final works, above all to denote a certain
dichotomic or separated nature of human psyche. Throughout this paper, when we refer
to the notion of Ego’s splitting, we mean this last perspective, coherently with the
Freudian work in which such a notion starts to be used with the celebrated works
Fetishism (of 1927), Splitting of the Ego in the Process of Defence (of 1938) and in Abriß
der Psychoanalyse (see Freud, 1938). Above all, we will follow the Freudian thought of
this last work. According to Freud, disavowal would allow us to explain the typical
features of psychoses and fetishism. Following Galimberti (2006), as stated above, the
original 1925 Freudian concept of disavowal was extended to all the painful perceptions
that, being in contrast with the pleasure principle, lead to not recognizing the reality,
transforming it in a hallucinatory manner to satisfy the desire. Hence, disavowal is a very
fundamental psychic mechanism which has to do with the external reality, and whose
main result is this Ego’s splitting. It is the first psychic agency to form for detecting
reality. The Ego’s splitting is a basic psychic mechanism preliminary to others, like
introjective and projective identification, etc. Following Greenacre (1971), in the
formation of Ego’s agency, a remarkable role is played by pre-Œdipus phases. In the
1930s, there was a considerable need for a deeper knowledge of Ego. In this regard, the
author, thanks to her professional psychiatrist activity, had the opportunity to examine
many clinical cases of psychosis which turned out to be of great usefulness just to study
the Ego’s function. After the studies of W. Hoffer, P. Schilder, M. Ribble, M. E. Fries, R.
A. Spitz and M. S. Mahler, it had been possible to ascertain that the first formations of
this agency are of a corporal or somatic nature (bodily Ego). Greenacre herself (and B.
Lantos) pointed out a certain primitive predisposition to anxiety, mainly related to the
elaboration of primal scenes, which will play a notable role in the Ego’s formation, if
properly cathexed, together its next splitting. According to Greenacre, the classical 1927
and 1938 Freudian works on fetishism were the best ones on fetishism and perversions. In
these works, Freud foregrounds the Ego’s splitting which takes place in consequence of
the strong castration anxiety when a child has recognized the gender sexual differences.
Above all, the kid refuses to recognize the reality of this painful situation. Nevertheless,
he assigns a penis to his mother, symbolically represented by the fetish (material41 or
merely symbolic) whose specific form is largely due to the displacement of that energetic
amount which has been determined in concomitance with the appearance of castration
anguish. The fetish formation must therefore provide these incongruities in the corporal
image formation through suitable surrogates. These may be physical parts of the body
(material fetish) or may be abstract formations like more or less complex fantasies (see
Greenacre, 1971). The pathological cases mainly take place during the passage from the
normal childish fetish of three- to four-year-olds to the latency phase, characterized by
the deterioration of the capacity to establish object relations. In Greenacre (1971), the
author contributed further interesting considerations on fetishism. According to her, the
fetish has mainly a phallic meaning, but also a bisexual one. Fetishism is a disorder which
is mainly due to an imperfect development of corporal image and of the bodily Ego, from
which derive disorders of reality sense, of identity sense and of object relations. The
adult’s fetish has something in common with the Winnicott childhood’s transitional
object which, usually, has a certain role in the constitution and development of the reality
and of the object relation, and concerns both sexes. The formation of a transitional object
takes place within the so-called (Winnicott-Spitz) transitional space, which is the space
41 In  this  case,  the  (material)  fetish  may  be  considered  as  a  materialized  screen 
memory which is related to implicit memory (see Mancia, 2007) or cover memory. 
around which the mother-child relationship and related transitional phenomenology take
place (see Vegetti & Finzi, 1976). The persistence in adult age of the fetish reveals a
chronic defect of psychosomatic structure, while the transitional object is usually
abandoned with the dawning of genitality, at least in normal cases. In most cases, the
fetish itself is something of a secret to the fetishist himself (or herself), which is strictly
related to the primary meaning of the Œdipus complex, that is to say, the uncovering of
the enigma sphinx, to confirm the basic relationships existing between fetish formation
and pregenital phases. Following Greenacre (1971), in the phallic phase a consolidation
of the recognition of genital organs takes place and, in the case of disorders and failures
in the formation of corporal Ego, the fetish formation may cope with this, with a
narcissistic reinforcement of Ego itself through it.
On Ego’s Ideal and Ideal Ego

Following Laplanche and Pontalis (1973), Freud, as mentioned above, put disavowal as
the main psychic mechanism involved in the Ego’s splitting. He started from the previous
notion of Spaltung due to J. Breuer and P. Janet, but gradually reached his original
generically oriented conception to indicate an intrapsychic division, above all in the last
part of his life, in reference to a splitting of the Ego into an observing part and into an
observed part. Later, from his above-mentioned 1927 works on fetishism, gradually
Freud posed the disavowal mechanism at the basis of this splitting phenomenon that he
wanted, in turn, to put at the basis of psychoses and perversions. Freud pointed out that in
psychoses a full separation from reality never takes place; in every psychosis, even the
deeper ones, two antithetic psychic attitudes always exist: the one that takes into account
the reality in the normal attitude, and the other that, under the drive influence, detaches
the Ego from reality, giving rise to delirious thoughts. The outcomes of this Ego’s
splitting are therefore two opposite psychic settings,42 of which each subsists, throughout
life, alongside the other and never singly of each other, but with the prevalence, from
time to time, of only one of these two, to the detriment of the other. Out of these, there is
a normal self-observing component which takes into account the external reality (and is
prodromic to the formation of the system Ego’s Ideal – Super-Ego) mainly through
opposition to the next subagency (the Ideal Ego), while the other, under the Es’ instinct
influence, tears out the Ego from the reality (and is prodromic to the unconscious
formation of the Ideal Ego) assuming a prevalent narcissistic formation on the basis of
primary identifications as a result of the mother-child relation. According to Nunberg and
Lagache, the Ideal Ego, genetically prior to the Super-Ego, is the first Ego’s component
to be formed from the symbiotic mother-child state, upon which the subject will build up
her or his further psychic development, and to which he or she comes back in psychotic
states (and not only in these). According to Lagache, the Ideal Ego has sadomasochistic
implications: in particular, hand in hand with Ideal Ego starting its formation, the
negation of the Other, by the pair Ego’s Ideal – Super-Ego, is correlative to the
affirmation of Self, thus giving rise to opposite pair formation and to the next separation
of their elements (consciousness process). Thus, following Laplanche and Pontalis
(1973), we have two basic Ego’s psychic components, the one that observes (Ego’s Ideal
42 Which might be considered as forming the first precursor of an opposite pair (or 
else  the  source  of  any  other  possible  philosophical  pair),  which  will  play  a 
fundamental role in the dialectic reasoning, as already stated above. 
– Super-Ego) and the other that is observed (Ideal Ego43). Human psychic behaviour will
be the dialectic result of the concomitant action of these two opposite and inseparable, but
independent from each other, Ego’s (sub)agencies, hence by the prevalence of one of
these two upon the remaining one. There is, however, always dialectic interaction44
between them. Freud put this splitting mechanism at the psychodynamic basis of
psychoses and other disorders (including neuroses), justifying the assumption of such a
mechanism as one of the main dynamic processes of psychic formation, which basically
allows us to relate ourselves to reality. In short, the basic opposition between the
(narcissistic) Ideal Ego and the (social) Ego’s Ideal is the early source of any further
dialectic process. Furthermore, within the Lacanian work, disavowal has been the first
psychic mechanism involved in a complex epistemological evolution that reached the
composite notion of forclusion which lies at the basis of the celebrated binomial O/o (that
is, discourse of the Other versus discourse of the other) that Lacan derives from the
previous binomial Ideal Ego/Ego’s Ideal. As mentioned above, these two Ego’s
components are not present in the Freudian thought, which introduced only the notion of
Ego’s Ideal and to which was brought back then the notion of Super-Ego. The history of
the pair Ideal Ego-Ego’s Ideal has undergone quite a hard-working evolutionary history.
Following Laplanche and Pontalis (1973), Freud introduced the notion of Ego’s Ideal in
On Narcissism. An Introduction (of 1914) to indicate an agency as resulting from the
convergence of infantile narcissism and omnipotence (which will form the idealizations
of the Ego) and the parental (hence social) agencies and identifications; later, first in
Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (of 1921), then in The Id and the Ego (of
1923), the Ego’s Ideal was identified with the Super-Ego agency, whose function is put in
the foreground in the formation of critical sense, of prohibition and self-observation
agencies and of interpersonal relations. Nevertheless, the psychoanalytic literature
identifies a certain difference between the Super-Ego agency and the Ego’s Ideal one
even if they overlap one another somewhat. The system Ego’s Ideal – Super-Ego is,
however, related to social and prohibition agencies as well as to self-observation, moral
and critical functions, even if there is no unanimous consensus in the respective
attribution of these. As early as On Narcissism. An Introduction (of 1914) Freud used the
term Ideal Ego but substantially as synonymous with Ego’s Ideal. These subagencies
would be retaken by H. Nunberg in 1932 (of which we will outline some related ideas in
the next subsection) and, in 1958, by D. Lagache, who indentifies a main opposition
between the Ideal Ego and the system Ego’s Ideal-Super-Ego. According to Lagache, the
Ideal Ego has a narcissistic character of omnipotence which is mainly due to a primary
43  These  two  Ego’s  agencies,  as  the  results  of  an  intrasystemic  agency  separation 
(the  Ego’s  splitting),  play  a  fundamental role in Lacan’s theoretical  framework. We 

would also  want  to  suggest the  hypothesis according to  which the first bodily  Ego 
formations  (the  first ones that  have  external  reality’s  preconscious  apprehension), 
and  from  which  will  form  the  Ego’s  Ideal  –  Super‐Ego  agency  system,  might  have 
their neurobiological counterpart in the mirror neuron systems or however related 
with  them.  For  instance,  the  latter  are  compromised  in  individuals  with  autism 
spectrum disorders (ASDs) (see Perkins, et al., 2010). Following Ritvo and Provence 
(1954), children with ASDs show disturbances in the area of human‐object relations, 
relations with toys and playthings, mobility patterns and language, and all this will 
turn  out  to  be  coherent  with  what  we  will  say  later  about  the  bodily  image 
formation  and  its  impairments.  In  any  case,  these  systems  will  surely  play  a  basic 
role in the formation of Ideal Ego agency as it has been defined above. 
44  Which is not present in psychoses.  

identification with the mother; it is irreducible to the Ego’s Ideal agency, and its
formation has sadomasochistic implications, including the negation of the Other in
correlation to the affirmation of Self, on the basis of the main opposition between the
Ideal Ego and the Ego’s Ideal – Super-Ego system. But, following Roudinesco (1995), it
was Jacques Lacan that, in 1954, without quoting Nunberg, in his own way considered
these two Ego subagencies as distinct from each other, putting them at the foundation of
his theoretical framework, highlighting their relevant nature and function. The Ideal Ego
is a narcissistic formation belonging to the imaginary register and formed during the
mirror stage (theorized by Lacan in 1936), whereas the Ego’s Ideal refers to a symbolic
function that is able to organize the set of the relationships of the subject with others. The
institution of the dualism O/o is therefore a consequence of the establishment of the
dualism Ego’s Ideal/Ideal Ego. In this system, Lacan laid out the celebrated Lévi-
Straussian splitting from nature to culture operated by universal incest prohibition
because this allowed Lacan to conceive a basic opposition between the symbolic function
of the Father (corresponding to the Ego’s Ideal or to the Other), representing the culture
and incarnation of the law, and the imaginary position of the Mother (from whom derives
the Ideal Ego or the other), depending on the order of Nature and destined to merge with
the child meant as the phallic object of a missing penis. It is thanks to the mirror stage
that the Œdipus phase starts, in such a manner that, through the paternal metaphor (name-
of-the-father), the child is separated from the mother, giving rise to the Ego’s Ideal
formation. Therefore, it is just by naming the missing mother penis – that is to say, the
child – by means of the paternal metaphor (the phallus) that the symbolic register takes
place (Ego’s Ideal or Other or signifier), which is related to a secondary process, through
disengaging from the imaginary register (the Ideal Ego or other or signified), which is
strictly related to the primary process. The consequent lack of being, due to this
disengaging from the mother womb,45 creates, amongst other things, the unsatisfiable
desire of the other of the imaginary order which will try to be satisfied with other
maternal substitutes that she or he will find in the symbolic order of the Other. The
symbolic register will allow her or himself to be perceived and recognized from the Ideal
Ego to the Ego’s Ideal, that is to say, through the symbol, whose notion starts from C.
Lévi-Strauss and F. de Saussure’s structuralistic theories. However, for Lacan, what is
fundamentally important is the signifier structure of the symbolic order and not the link
of symbol with the symbolized (or signified), which concerns with the imaginary order,
as in Freud.
An outline of Hermann Nunberg’s Ego’s psychology

The little-known work of Hermann Nunberg (1932, 1955, 1975) contains a great number
of new ideas and insights on psychoanalysis besides being one of the most important
45    Just  at  this  point  occurs  the  forclusion,  a  specific  Lacanian  splitting  mechanism 
based  on  reality’s  rejection  (Verwerfung)  and  derived  both  from  the  Freudian 
spaltung  and  from  Laforgue  and  Pichon‐Rivière’s  scotomization.  This  mechanism 
roughly consists in the primordial rejection of a fundamental signifier (the name‐of‐
the‐father, hence the symbolic phallus) out of the symbolic register of the subject, so 
giving rise to a psychotic state. Therefore, the (symbolic) phallus is a cornerstone of 
Lacanian  theory  basically  because  it  is  the  primordial  symbol  to  enter  into  the 
symbolic  order.  Hence,  also  in  the  Lacan  theory  of  the  symbolic,  the  phallus,  with 
related castration phenomena, plays a fundamental role (see Recalcati, 2003). 
treatises46 on orthodox psychoanalytic theory, as remembered by Freud himself in his
preface to this work. For our purposes, we only recall here some points of his work which
may have some usefulness for what is expounded here. For instance, in Nunberg (1932,
1955, 1975), a clear and complete discussion of Ego psychology is presented, of which
we here outline those main points that are useful for our studies. In it, the primary role of
bodily Ego is highlighted, understood as the first central core around which will revolve
and build up all the following representations. The perception is the first and basic
element for establishing the reality exam which develops with great slowness but on
which will depend all the following psychic formation. The Ego will accomplish both
internal and external requests, with a suitable right energy distribution. According to
Nunberg, the Ego initially is in an unorganized phase within the Id, whose delimitation
identifies a subagency called Ideal Ego, which has a full narcissistic and omnipotent
character turned only toward the satisfaction of the own needs.47 During the psychic
development, this subagency gradually leaves its role in place of the other rising
subagency called the Ego’s Ideal, even if, particularly in psychotic states, the individual
intends to come back to the Ideal Ego when fantasies of “coming back to the maternal
womb” predominate. Children and schizophrenics have great difficulty in disengaging
from their strong narcissistic and omnipotent Ideal Ego which has an unconscious nature
and is ruled by the principle of pleasure, trying to satisfy every need also in a
hallucinatory manner in case of non-immediate satisfaction. Hence, the main defence
mechanisms of Ideal Ego are negation, projection and hallucination to avoid any
unpleasantness. Nevertheless, in normality, it is not always possible to disregard the
reality, thus giving rise to the formation of the reality principle, which is often mediated
by the thought. Between the perception of reality and the action adapted to the perceived
reality gradually the thought is inserted, which prepares the action, eventually substituting
it. The judgment function of negation, according to Freud, is the first transition step from
ignorance to recognition. To be precise, recognition takes place thanks to a state of
spiritual protection which seeks stimuli from the external world which, in turn, will be
apperceived and accepted by the Ego. Therefore, recognition undergoes the influx of
impulses which are aimed at establishing a link with the external world and its objects,
drawing its energy from life instincts. Ignorance, instead, comes from a state which feels
the stimuli of the external world as unpleasant, so perturbing the ever desiderated quite.
Thus, the Ego definitively closes the perceptive system against them. Negation, instead,
takes a further step, in the sense that it recognizes what is unpleasant, and, at the same
time, eliminates, expels and annihilates (in the unconscious) all that. Ignorance and
negation are energetically supported by death instincts. Therefore, the relationships
between the external and internal world are ruled by the interplay between life and death
instincts by means of the own bodily image and its borders. The gradual adaptation to
reality takes place to inhibit the aggressiveness (Thanatos) through life instincts (Eros)
which provide energy for libidinal investments of the first object relationships. In this
regard, Nunberg considers the depersonalization states and schizophrenia as patterns to
infer as a reality sense starts to form. In pursuing this, as we will see, the last 1938
Freudian thought seems to be re-evoked. In both cases, there is a retirement of libido
from the lost-love object to which are also associated the world’s destruction feelings
with related aggressiveness tendencies that Nunberg attributes to the anxieties of
46  Together the well‐known treatise of O. Fenichel (1945). 
47  Subsequently,  D.  Lagache  will  bring  back  this  subagency  to  the  maternal 
predominance  or  to  the  phallic  mother.  He  brings  back  to  it  possible  delinquent 
behaviours.  
castration. Furthermore, in these pathological cases, Nunberg detected a certain increase
of narcissistic components that he would want to bring back to an identification of the
Ego with the phallus due to the retirement of the libidinal cathexis from objects to the
Ego, with consequent loss of the reality sense. Therefore, Nunberg deduces two main
consequences: first, that the recognition of reality takes place thanks to a certain capacity
of the Ego to turn the libido toward external objects; second, that there is a component of
the Ego that does not want to recognize the perceived reality, notwithstanding this is just
perceived. It seems that this part of the Ego does not want to know of the perceptions,
notwithstanding these are rightly perceived. And the remaining perceiving part of the Ego
seems as well to be suffering from this denial. Therefore, there are two subagencies of the
Ego, one that perceives and acts, the other that judges the Ego’s experiences which need
to be approved in order that these may have a sense of reality. This might explain why it
is immoral to deny the reality and not instead say the truth. Thus, Nunberg deepens this
self-observing and critical agency of Ego which is located in the preconscious system.
The first bodily Ego’s percepts will be undergone to the critical and observational
modalities of the Ego. They will be recognized or denied according to modalities which
have no sensorial character and are absent in schizophrenic patients where a deep self-
observation prevails, but not over percepts of the external world. In normality, the
perceiving and self-observing Ego’s subagencies harmonically and constructively co-
operate with the critical one; often, these two Ego’s subagencies are not easily
distinguishable inasmuch as they overlap with one another, becoming quite differentiated
or separated only when a conflict arises between them. These critical and self-observing
agencies will form the substrate to the next merely psychic Super-Ego agency, which will
reach its most complete formation with the end of the Œdipus complex. The Super-Ego
will begin to intervene between the Id and the narcissistic Ideal Ego agencies, making
itself bearer of the social and reality agencies; it will be the result of successive
identifications but, in turn, it is also susceptible to influences from the first ones.
Nevertheless, this mediation role is often failed by the Super-Ego because of its extreme
difficulty in conciliating the Id and Ideal Ego agencies. Nevertheless, Nunberg highlights
that both life and death instincts contribute to determining the structure of the Super-Ego.
To be precise, its structure mainly stems from the inhibition of immediate instinctual
satisfaction to account for reality needs, and this may take place both from death and life
instincts. The death instincts concur to determine such an inhibition of the rigid,
prohibitive and authoritarian structure of the Super-Ego, whereas the life instincts concur
to determine another particular structure classified as Ego’s Ideal, which is carried out as
follows. When, for love,48 one gives in to an instinctual satisfaction for fear of losing a
loved object, the latter will be taken on into the Ego domain and cathexed by the libido,
so becoming a part of Ego which will be called Ego’s Ideal. It is for love of her or his
own ideal that the individual remains emotionally bound to it and undergoes to its
requests. So, the Ego obeys both the Super-Ego for fear of a punishment and Ego’s Ideal
for love. This last love is not sexual because it is the outcome of a transformation of an
object libido into an Ego’s libido, so that a desexualization takes place, that is to say, a
sublimation,49 so that the narcissism of Ego’s Ideal has a secondary nature (because it is
linked to a secondary process), while that of the Ideal Ego is a narcissism having a
primary nature. According to Nunberg, the system Ego’s Ideal – Super-Ego provides the
48   Here, when one speaks of love, we refer to the wider general sense of this term, 
not only to the sensual one.  
49 Subsequently, J. Chasseguet‐Smirgel (1985) identified various possible outcomes 
for the Ego’s Ideal, perverse as well as creative. 
representation of the external world to the Ego. Therefore, instinctual renunciations may
take place either for hate or for fear of a punishment and for love, so that the dual system
Ego’s Ideal – Super-Ego is characterized by an ambiguous or ambivalent nature moulded
on the fundamentally opposite love-hate pair. Nunberg puts in evidences the historical
evolution of these notions since the Freudian work: indeed, as stated above, Freud mainly
conceived the Ego’s Ideal as being synonymous with Super-Ego, hence pointing out its
prohibitive agencies and not the loving aspects. Instead, Nunberg retook the system Ego’s
Ideal – Super-Ego and deepened the distinction between these two agencies, although it is
very difficult to descry a net distinction between them. According to Nunberg, the Ego’s
Ideal has mainly a maternal libido, while the Super-Ego has mainly a paternal libido,
even if there is a certain merger of both. The Ego’s Ideal, due to its mainly maternal
nature, starts to form from pregenital phases, while the Super-Ego, due to its mainly
paternal nature, starts to form during the genital phase because of the castration fear
which puts at risk the whole Ego due to its genital identification. The Super-Ego is
responsible for the sense of guilt, while the Ego’s Ideal is responsible for the sense of
inferiority. Nunberg stresses the complexity of the system Ego’s Ideal – Super-Ego, the
first subagency being provided by life instincts and characterized by a prevalence of love
while the second subagency is underpinned by death instincts and mainly ruled by
severity, austerity and by a general asceticism just to stem these destructive instincts. The
internal structure of this system is quite complex and variously subdivided into itself,
with continuous oscillations from one component to another: for agency, in certain cases
the more severe Super-Ego may prevail, in others the rather milder Ego’s Ideal may
prevail. The Ego will therefore accomplish control, mediation and synthetic functions in
regard to the various requests coming from all these agencies, namely the Id, Ego’s Ideal
– Super-Ego and Ideal Ego, which are mostly in opposition with each other.
On fetishism: first outlines

From the epistemological viewpoint, Freud reached the conception of an Ego’s splitting
by studying a particular psychopathological model, that of fetishism. This is mainly
meant to be a male perversion in which there is no recognition of the female penile lack
since this is a fact that, if it were denied, would turn out to be potentially anxiogenic
because of the castration complex which is experienced by most people (due to its
universal character, as recalled above). He (or she50) therefore recuses his (or her) own
sensorial perception51 which has shown to him (or her) that the female genital apparatus
lacks a penis, firmly keeping to the opposite conviction. Nevertheless, this denied
perception does not remain without any psychic consequence since he (or she) does not
have the courage, or the dishonesty, to affirm seeing a penis, unless he (or she) stays in a
psychotic state. Thus, to compensate for this, he (or she) either turns towards a further
general symbolic elaboration52 (as in most normal cases) or clings to something more
material, like a part of the body or an object to which he (or she) ascribes the penis role or
50
    We  have  intentionally  given  precedence  to  males  over  females  because  these 
phenomena  mainly  concern  the  former,  although  not  exclusively.  Only  for  this 
reason  have  we  put  the  female  third  person  individual  pronoun  “she”  within 
brackets. 
51
  Which still turns out to be not compromised. 
52
    Considering  this  in  the  general  framework  describing  the  crucial  passage  from 
nature  to  culture,  that  is  to  say,  we  regard  the  symbolic  function  as  the  main 
landmark of this. Sublimation therefore has to be meant as a consequence of it.
considers it to be acting as a material symbolic replacement for this. All that (fetish
creation) is due to the fact that he (or she) does not admit this lack of a penis,
notwithstanding the evidence thereof. However, Freud (1938, 1949, 1999) himself
pointed out that this fetish creation does not provide the exact paradigm of the Ego’s
splitting mechanism, since the former belongs to the proper psychopathological context
whereas the castration complex, with its possible effects (including this Ego splitting),
basically concerns normality – that is to say, it concerns every human being, as we shall
see later – but without excluding possible pathological degenerations (just like in
fetishism). Subsequently, Freud was led to consider disavowal (as already seen,
essentially based on castration anxiety) as concerning, in pathological cases, the full
recusation of external reality by the psychotic, as opposed to the repression carried out by
the neurotic. Indeed, the former completely recuses the external reality (due to a
structural deficit of the pair Ego’s Ideal – Super-Ego), whereas the latter removes the
(internal) Es’ needs. In the first case, as already said, we have an Ego splitting (with a
complete prevalence of the narcissistic Ideal Ego) that is different from other splitting
phenomena due to the neurotic repression, because the latter concerns an internal conflict
between two distinct agencies, the Ego against the Es, in regard to an internal (and not
external) reality. Hence, only the former has some relationship with the external world,
and Freud put it at the source of every other form of disavowal of reality that yet may be
symbolically reconceived or rebuilt up. Thus, disavowal mainly has to do with primary
relationships between these two Ego’s subagencies, the Ideal Ego and the Ego’s Ideal –
Super-Ego, due to the above-mentioned Ego splitting.53
On negation, fetishism and linguistics

First linguistic implications
Following Galimberti (2006), negation (Verneinung) has to do with the conscious
emersion of repressed material in a negative form in respect of that presented at the
moment in which such a content was repressed. Hence, through negation, which is a
mechanism laying out into the class of repression phenomena, it will be possible to make
conscious a repressed content. Freud introduced such a notion in 1925, distinguishing it
from that of disavowal but with which it has close relations. Indeed, according to Thass-
Thienemann (1967), a strict correlation exists between grammatical negations and the
Freudian concept of disavowal discussed above. After a detailed historic-epistemological
comparative analysis of various grammatical negation terms, according to Thass-
Thienemann, their negativistic character subtends an anal aggressive element, in which it
is possible to descry the verbal expression of one of the greatest events of the child
emotive-affective development, namely that concerning the discovery of sexual
differences,54 with all the correlated intense anxious emotive charges which will be at the
energetic basis for the incipiency of other basic psychodynamic mechanisms, like that of
repression and disavowal.55 The author, in this regard, quotes the almost universally
53
    Which  is  a  mechanism  in  some  respects  quite  similar  to  the  above‐mentioned 
scotomization of E. Pichon‐Rivière and R. Laforgue (see Rycroft, 1968a). 
54  It’s not by chance that the  common language of children (and not only them) is 
full of references to genital organs.  
55    Which  will  become  operative  in  the  subsequent  phallic  phase.  In  this  regard, 
therefore, it is noteworthy to highlight this strict and fundamental link between the 
known stories and tales whose leitmotiv are goblins, or little spirits, which often disappear
in such a way that it is impossible to establish whether they are present or not. Since a
little goblin is clearly a phallic symbol, all that means that sometimes the little penis is
missing and at other times it is present, reflecting the primeval infantile observation
experienced by a child in noting gender anatomical differences. We are at the border
between the anal phase and the phallic one. Therefore, this being-there and not-being-
there (and that, in part, recalls M. Heidegger’s thought) correspond to the first child
fantasies in observing this, which thereafter will unconsciously mould the fantasies of
verbal negation. This duality between ‘being-there’ and ‘not-being-there’ has also been
one of the main themes of Soren Kierkegaard and Martin Heidegger’s philosophies,
whose ontological theories of nothing are at the basis of existential anguish as a human
response to nothing. Again according to Thass-Thienemann, there is not much difference
between the metaphysical interpretation of anguish and the metapsychological one. But
the latter is but the castration anxiety due, as already said, to the ascertainment of the
female penile lack, so that, in conclusion, the philosophical nothing is but the abstract
elaboration of the “nothing” perceived during the childhood in the moment of seeing the
related gender anatomical differences, that is to say, the bewilderment, the astonishment
and the disbelief of a child before the “nothing” of a woman (in seeing her genital
setting); however, this appreciable, even if little known, work of Thass-Thienemann on
negation will receive further confirmation later. On the other hand, following Nunberg
(1975), the language originates from sexual instincts (as stated by H. Sperber) as well as
being a substitute for actions having a desexualized meaning, so that it is the result of a
sublimation process which has taken place in the first phases of psychosexual
development. Nunberg recalls a fact drawn from the autobiography of the Russian writer
and dramatist Maksim Gor’kij (1868-1936) who wrote that, after having taught a farmer
to read, the latter exclaimed that he was astonished by the possibility that a thing, while
not being there, it is as if was there.
Other linguistic implications

Taking into account what has been said above, the Freudian psychosexual development
may play a central role in the foundation and behaviour of a certain primary psychic
grammar on the basis of the above oppositions which seem to develop during the passage
from the anal phase to the phallic one, thanks to the action of the disavowal mechanism.
The linguistic function is one of the main symbolic systems of communication amongst
human beings. It takes place during and parallel to the specific phases of Freudian
psychosexual development herein considered. In this framework, two main basic rules
can be identified, namely:
a) Separation of opposites. As we know, in the unconscious domain prevails a

symmetric principle (see the work of I. Matte Blanco, briefly recalled in Iurato (2013)
through which a statement with its negation may be valid. Within it, it is not possible to
have a distinction between the elements of an opposite pair, so that, for example, there is
no distinction between “I” and “not-I” (or Me and not-Me). Following Laplanche and
Pontalis (1973), Freud, for the first time, spoke of opposites in regard to perversions in
Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (of 1905), stating that some of these take place
through pairs of opposites, and this fact has a great importance from the theoretical
anal phase and the subsequent one, the phallic phase, in which a unification of the 
previous partial instincts will take place under the control of genital organs.  
viewpoint. From here on, the notion will be present almost everywhere in all of Freud’s
work. The opposite elements of such a pair are irreducible each to the other, thus giving
rise to a psychic conflict which will be overcome only through a dialectic process. With
the separation of the primary opposite elements (I, not-I), through the Ego’s splitting
(from the disavowal mechanism), it will then be possible to attain the first rudiments of
otherness, with the formation of “you”, “he” and “she”. These are the first steps towards
the formation of the own identity in respect to the otherness. In doing so, the identity and
symmetric principles take place, which are two elementary principles of Aristotelian
logic. To be precise, the main elementary Boolean logic operators, upon which relies
elementary logic, are conjugation, negation, disjunction, material implication and
biconditional implication. Nevertheless, C.S. Peirce proved that all five of these operators
can be derived from only two primitives, namely conjugation and negation (see Akhtar
and O’Neil, 2011; and references therein).
b) Symbolic formation. After the separation of opposites, in the unconscious realm, a

dialectic synthesis of their dynamic opposition can be attained through symbolic
elaboration. For instance, from the previous opposition process, it is possible to have
identifications56 of the type “not-penis = vagina” and “vagina = castration” (the vagina’s
emptiness being the result of a castration and therefore inducing a consequent castration
anxiety), from which it follows the very crucial painful identification “not-penis =
castration”, which is what is effectively observed during the passage from the anal to the
phallic phase, until the Œdipus complex. Hence, if this last concatenation process takes
place, then the achievement of the transitivity principle is possible. On the other hand,
that the penis and the vagina might form a primordial opposite pair is simply due to the
opposed anatomic-geometrical constitution. Then, within Lacan’s framework, the
phallus, as the main signifier which will distribute the various signified, institutes a first
difference between have or not have, which will constitute the first primordial step from
the imaginary order to the symbolic one.
In particular, from the conclusion given by the last pivotal identification “not-penis =
castration”, a certain more or less strong anxiety follows (of castration, stronger in males
for obvious reasons) whose consequent affective-emotive energetic charge must be
cathexed to avoid such an anguish. From here, the disavowal mechanism starts to operate
in its stronger action. Therefore, the possible solutions are mainly twofold: a fetishistic
(material) degeneration or a symbolic elaboration, both of which are oriented to
desperately find such a penis lacking in females. In normal cases, the symbolic
elaboration is the first step towards the institution of every other following human
symbolic process. En passant, we observe that the above a) and b) processes are at the
early origins of the elementary logical thought (in its Aristotelian form): indeed, from
them follow the identity, symmetry and transitivity principles by which, in turn, follows
dialectic reasoning,57 through the building up of the naïve set theory in its Boolean form,
thus obtaining the elementary propositional algebra of Aristotelian logic (see Iurato,
2013). On the other hand, following Greenacre (1971), the fetish represents the substitute
for the maternal phallus in which the child had first believed and which he (or she) does
not want to renounce, keeping, therefore, his (or her) initial idea thanks to the fetish, at
56  Such  identifications  are  now  possible  through  the  action  of  the  previous 
separation  process  thanks  to  which  an  identity  principle  is  available.  From  it,  the 
identification and discrimination processes are functional to their aims.  
57  See Lombardo Radice (1965). 

the cost of a violent denial of reality. The fetish is the symbol of triumph at the threat of
castration and a protection from it. According to Freud, fetishists have a sort of double
image of female castration, that is to say, the fetish, at the same time, denies and affirms
the existence of castration, thus giving rise to opposite attitudes. Therefore, the symbol
(that is to say, the fetish) is usually what may reunite in itself (or put together) the
opposites, in line with the original etymological meaning of symbol and with what has
been said at points a) and b). This is what Freud himself claims, to confirm what we have
said above. Subsequently Freud focused his attention on fetishism in relation to the
reality sense and to the Ego’s splitting, as we have outlined above. Indeed, the castration
anxiety gives rise to a conflict between the instinctual demand (due to the pleasure
principle) and the reality domain, in which the child does not want to renounce the
gratification but at the same time he (or she) does not deny the reality, inducing two
opposite reactions which will be at the centre of the next Ego’s splitting. This is the early
origin of dialectic reasoning. According to R. C. Bak, the symbolic meaning of fetish is
due to condensation processes put in place during pregential phases (namely, the phallic
and Œdipus ones). Again according to Greenacre (1971), the fetish is the key to a hesitant
genitality. It should satisfy stability, visibility and tangibility requirements, as well as be
able to symbolize the penis and its opposite (whence a)). Then in Greenacre (1971), the
reverential fear reactions in childhood mainly start at the end of the Œdipus phase as a
result of the previous strong penis reverential awe during the phallic phase which implies,
at the same time, fear and admiration of the penis itself. These contrasting phallic images
often remain in adult life, and might be put into relation with what is said in the above
point a). These last discussions are also linkable with creative attitudes, as we will see
later. Hermann58 (1989) gives a psychoanalytic explanation of the above-mentioned basic
logic principles on the basis of the Œdipus complex. But, on the basis of his clinical case,
Hermann also introduced another psychic mechanism, called dual procedure, that he
wanted to bring back to the castration anxiety and that will provide every dualistic feature
of thought. Hermann puts it at the basis of his framework, even trying to explain the
Œdipus complex through it. On the other hand, Hermann himself states that the logical
thought comes from a pre-existent primitive thought that he calls totemic mentality, that
is to say, he wants to consider a totemic origin of logical thought, so that the latter has a
substantial fetishistic nature.
On embodied linguistics
On the basis of the previous work of I. Matte Blanco on the inextricable relationships
between symmetric and asymmetric thought (which comprise those related to emotion
and rational thought), the analysis of the relationships between primordial thought
language (like those experienced in altered states of consciousness) and cognitive
linguistic features (like syntactic structures and creativity), as discussed in Cariola (2012),
show what primary role the body boundary awareness elements have in primary
conscious acts, like the right perception and usage of space-time categories and those
regarding the right separation between Me and not-Me, the latter playing a fundamental
role in consciousness development, as Freud himself stated. As regards, then, what is said
at point a), a further confirmation that separation of opposites takes place during the
passage from the phallic phase to the Œdipus one comes from Cuccio (2011, 2012) and
references therein, where, essentially, it is said that the first forms of linguistic negation
are acquired between two and a half years old and three years old, and that these play a
58 The original paper dates back to 1924. 

very basic role in human cognitive development. We textually report what is said in
Cuccio (2011, p. 48), namely:
By looking at first-language learning in infancy, we can see […] three steps in the
acquisition of linguistic negation: 1) rejection/refusal; 2) disappearance/non-
existence/unfulfilled expectation; 3) denial. According to many studies, […] rejection
is the first category of negation to be acquired. Children use “no” to express refusal of
something existing in their present context. However, we can find examples of
rejection in human pre-linguistic gestures and even in animal behaviour. In fact, before
the time children start to produce the single word “no” to express rejection, they have
already expressed rejection non-linguistically. Rejection […] does not require abstract
mental representations, while non-existence and denial do require them. The second
category of linguistic negation to arise is non-existence/unfulfilled expectation. At this
point, children are able to signal the absence or disappearance of an expected referent
in the context of speech or indicate something that violates their expectations, based
on previous experience (for instance, malfunctioning toys). Lastly, the third category
to be acquired is denial. Denial implies negation of a predication. The referent is
usually symbolically expressed. […] To deny, children must have the ability to discern
between their own knowledge of the world and the knowledge of their listener. In
order to deny a sentence, children have to manage with two propositions, one
affirming and one negating the same predication; and they have to ascribe one of them
to the person they are speaking to. “To deny the truth of another person’s statement
entails the understanding that the other person may hold different beliefs, or that
language is itself a representation of reality, not reality itself” [...]. Denial is usually
acquired by the age of two and a half years. […] Categories of negation are acquired
according to the complexity of the inferences that they entail. At the beginning,

children are only able to make inferences about the present perceptual situation. Thus,
at first, children can only negate (rejecting, prohibiting or expressing non-existence)
something currently present in the perceptual context of speech or something that just
before was present in the speech context. Later on, as children start to express denial,
they become able to read their listener presuppositions. At this time, children rely both
on perceptual and pragmatic context.
It is clearly possible to establish parallels between the non-existence and denial processes
of the above and the disavowal mechanism which we have considered. According to
Cuccio (2011), negation is a typical universal future of human language and there is no
known animal communication system that has negation. The acquisition of linguistic
negation is a fundamental step in human cognitive development. Following Cuccio
(2011, p. 47):
Many studies carried out during these last decades have been looking at the
acquisition of negation in first-language learning […]. All of them seem to agree on
the opinion that the acquisition of linguistic negation is a fundamental step in
cognitive development. According to Spitz (1957), the ability “to say no” is the most
important achievement of first infancy. In fact, by saying “no” children, for the first
time, are symbolically expressing an abstract concept (see D’Aniello, 1989; Spitz,
1957). The use of negation requires complex cognitive abilities. As psycholinguistic
research has shown, in order to use negation children need to know the difference
between their own mental representations and the external world; they need to know
the difference between their own mental representations and the mental
representations of the person they are speaking to; moreover, in complex forms of
negation, children cannot entirely rely on a present perceptual scene but instead they
need to manage their listeners’ beliefs and other epistemic states. Thus, although the
expression of negation is acquired very early in infancy (before children learn to talk,
in fact prelinguistic infants can reject something by using gestures or by shaking their

head), negation is all but cognitively simple. Of course, linguistic negation is far more
complex than its non-linguistic expression; still “no” is acquired very early on, being
one of the first words in language acquisition. Psycholinguists have been identifying
the different semantic categories of negation that emerge during cognitive and
linguistic development. The number of these categories increases or decreases
depending on the criteria of classification adopted in each study. However, although
there is not a general agreement, we will see that the functions and the order of
appearance in these studies are roughly the same.
On the other hand, linguistic negation is a metalinguistic operator because it cannot be

referentially used, and this is a remarkable fact for the development of consciousness
because, amongst other things, this operator entails a second-order mental representation.
Finally, following Cuccio (2011), it has been observed that ASD subjects are unable to
use a correct linguistic negation, coherently with what will be said in the following Part 2.
Thereafter, in Cuccio (2012), interesting relations between embodiment and linguistic
functions are highlighted on the basis of the prominent discovery of the mirror neuron
system which has given scientific proof that language and cognition are embodied. We
now follow Cuccio (2012, p. 2) (who, in part, revisits what is said in her previous 2011
work):
According to many studies […] rejection is the first category of negation to be
acquired. Children use “no” to express refusal of something existing in their present
context. Before the time children start to produce the single word “no” to express
rejection, they have already expressed rejection non-linguistically. Rejection […] does
not require abstract mental representations, while non-existence and denial do require
them. The second category of linguistic negation to arise is non-existence/unfulfilled
expectation. At this point, children are able to signal the absence or disappearance of
an expected referent in the context of speech or to indicate something that violates
their expectations, based on previous experience (for instance, malfunctioning toys).
Lastly, the third category to be acquired is denial. Denial implies negation of a
predication. The referent is usually symbolically expressed. […] To deny children

must have the ability to discern between their own knowledge of the world and the
knowledge of their listener. In order to deny a sentence, children have to deal with two
propositions, one affirming and one negating the same predication; and they have to
ascribe one of these to the person they are speaking to. To deny the truth of another
person’s statement entails the understanding that the other person may hold different
beliefs, or that language is itself a representation of reality, not reality itself […].
Denial is usually acquired by the age of two and a half years.
Clearly, there are many interesting points which lend themselves to being explained by
means of what is proposed in this paper and that might be the aim of a further in-depth
study. The importance of negation in logic and in all scientific inquiry is also reconfirmed
by B.E. Litowitz in Akhtar and O’Neil (2011), where a complete and in-depth review of
the already made psycholinguistic researches on rejection, refusal and denial59 is
presented in the light of psychoanalytic perspectives. To these last linguistic arguments,
namely of the possible explanatory potential which might have the theoretical pattern
here considered and based on the disavowal mechanism (considered to be a general
psychodynamic mechanism), it will therefore be necessary to return later.
Other post-Freudian perspectives on fetishism

A general historical account
According to Resnik (1979), at the basis of symbolization lies the aware depressive60
elaboration of absence as a model of the expression of a lack, or loss, due to a traumatic
separation (like the mother-child one), where the symbol phenomenologically arises as a
new and indirect presence to fill up the not-being of the absence, taking the original
object’s place. According to Fenichel (1945), fetishism necessarily implies some form of
Ego’s splitting because of the attempt to unconsciously disavow (by Ego’s Ideal) a
(painful) truth at the same time recognized by the conscious part of the individual’s
personality (by the Ideal Ego). Furthermore, we agree with the statement of Laplanche
and Pontalis (1973) according to whom, due to its basic characteristics of having
fundamental relationships with the external reality, it is assumed that disavowal is a
primary founding dynamic process of the human psychic reality rather than a simple
defence mechanism related to a specific perceptive fact (A. Freud). Moreover, this last
claim is based on the the Jacques Lacan symbolic register (whose valuable work will
deserve further consideration), as already said. In particular, the theoretical framework of
this author takes into consideration the general linguistic structure in the form given by R.
Jakobson, in which, roughly speaking, the language is articulated on the two axes of the
presence (syntagmatic level) and of the absence (paradigmatic level), that is to say,
according to the rhetorical figures respectively of the metaphor (by condensation) and
59  Which are the three main negation operators of linguistics. 
60  In the Melanie Klein sense. 

metonymy (by displacement). And the fetish61 formation, in its symbolic and material
nature, just accomplishes to these. As we shall see, the above evaluations of Resnik will
be in full agreement with the notions which will be later exposed. According to
Alexander (1948), the origins of the notion of fetishism are particularly intricate. The first
interpretations of fetishism date back to Alfred Binet and Richard von Krafft-Ebing in the
1870s, which were retaken later by Freud himself who pointed out, above all, the
symbolic meaning of the fetish object, and according to whom this symbolically
represents a sort of female penis that the child fantastically imagines to be owned by the
woman too, to avoid the Œdipus castration anxiety. Then, according to Giberti and Rossi
(1996), Ellenberger (1970) and Greenacre (1971), the fetish is but the symbolic
representation of the phallus. Furthermore, Giberti and Rossi (1996) and Greenacre
(1971) briefly recall the related ideas of some authors, including E. Glover, O. Fenichel,
P. Bergman, J. Harnik, E. Kronold, E. Vencovsky, S. Bonnett, S. Payne, M. Balint, W. H.
Gillespie, R. C. Bak, P. Weissmann, M. Sperling, M. Wulff, E. Sterba, J. K. Friedjung, A.
Z. Idelsohn, S. Lorand, P. Greenacre and others, according to whom the fetish (in its
degenerate meaning) is a symbol of parts of the maternal body, used for the purpose of
avoiding separation anxiety or to restore the integrity of the maternal body considered to
be impaired or fragmented. Afterwards, J. Chasseguet-Smirgel (1985) made a deeper
historic-epistemological recognition of the most important contributions to this argument,
reaching the conclusion that the fetish, as a depository for all the partial object loss during
human development, allows both the separation from the mother and the castration
complex with its anxious implications to be avoided. The fetish shows displacement and
condensation properties. The former are related to attempts to shift the strong energetic
charge associated with castration anxieties and fears (as well as frustrations) in such a
manner as to minimize them. The latter, on the other hand, are mainly correlated to
attempts to reorganize that lost unity of a fragmented corporal image that characterizes
fetishism (see later). In this regard, for instance, Wulff62 reports some 1946 clinical cases
of infantile fetishism in which the created fetish joined together in itself the various
partial objects, again in accordance with the original meaning of the term “symbol”.
However, on general perversions and their history, see above all Khan Masud (1979) and
Chasseguet-Smirgel (1985).
Some clinical data

As already mentioned above, Laplanche and Pontalis (1973) stressed the fact that the
disavowal mechanism could be a fundamental and common psychic mechanism. This
might find further clinical confirmation in what follows. First, Freud himself pointed out
the polymorphously perverse nature of the child, a feature which potentially persists until
the advent of the Œdipus complex (see Rycroft, 1968a) and roughly consisting in the
interchange of various erotogenic zones amongst them. It is not clear at what point of
childhood psychosexual development takes place such as a set of disorganized and
polymorphic perverse states (from which will depart neuroses and perversions). But then,
according to Giberti and Rossi (1996, p. 332), higher or lower degrees of fetishism are
present at every age and in every person, as well as in certain life circumstances like in
61 It would be better to speak of a transitional object‐infantile fetish entity (see later) 
instead of simple fetish.  
62  See also Greenacre (1971). 

mourning and its elaboration (Kleinian depressive position63). Nunberg (1932, 1955,
1975), in discussing perversions, states that within certain limits, the deviation of the
object from the final sexual aim is quite normal. Raphling (1989), in discussing a case of
female fetishism, states that the clinical example analysed by him confirms the existence
of fetishism in women and suggests that subtle forms of perversion may go unnoticed and
be more prevalent than previously realized. Greenacre (1971) states that forms of sexual
perversions are far from being rare. Furthermore, in Greenacre (1971), the author states
that there exists a ubiquitous and not worrying childish fetishism, mainly based on the
need for contact with the maternal body (D. W. Winnicott), which will be spontaneously
rejected around three or four years old, but that might degenerate in pathological cases.
Therefore, according to studies made by O. Stevenson, D. W. Winnicott and M. Wulff
(see Greenacre, 1971) fetishistic phenomena are almost always normally present through
the phenomenology of transitional objects which play a fundamental role in the
constitution of reality and of object relations. In Greenacre (1971), the author discusses
on some researches about the normal presence of a fetish phenomenology in childhood
which will be spontaneously abandoned after the phallic-Œdipus period. In this regard,
see Spiegel (1967), in which the author states that this fact is very frequent in baby boys
and baby girls. Freud gives a great deal to the ascertainment of the lack of a penis in the
mother which is almost ubiquitous in childhood (see Greenacre (1971) because it is
related to the almost equally ubiquitous anatomic sexual difference awareness. According
to Garzotto (1985), fetishism represents the psychopathological degeneration (paraphilia)
of a normal psychic modality in a child, during whose development he (or she) replaces
the above-mentioned primitive (body) fragments with their symbolic substitutes like, for
example, games, dolls, teddies, Lego, and so on (according to Winnicott). This tendency,
known by Solomon and Patch (1971) as partialism, to privilege portions of object, or
fragments (partial objects), in place of the global or entire one (total object), is just the
essence of fetishism. In regard to the set of these fragments, the adult fetishist develops a
drive which has the modalities of adult sexuality even if he (or she) is not able to cathexis
his (or her) drives on the sexual object considered in its totality since this would re-evoke
an anxious situation related to his (or her) incapacity to experience an adult love. Hence,
he (or she) is unable to develop a global or unified sense. Following Greenacre (1971),
the bodily Ego starts to develop from the first four months of life hereafter, where
fundamental integration processes of the various sensorial (above all visual and tactile)
explorations take place to give rise to a corporal Self as separate from the external world.
In this period, the presymbolic formation of a transitional object and related phenomena
according to the 1953 D. W. Winnicott seminal work take place, thanks to which the
transition from the oral phase relation with the mother to the first real object relations
with the external world is possible, and that will form the so-called transitional space.
Winnicott proves that the childish fetish, which is almost ubiquitous, is usually formed by
a preferred transitional object like a toy or any other object which has to do with the
external world. This is both a Me-object and a not-Me-object until the not-being-Me is
fully accepted, thus allowing the separation of opposites (see above point a)). According
to R. Löwenstein, the transitional object may start from the genitals as well as the breasts.
It will be put, by the child, into relationships with the body to give rise to his (or her)
corporal image which, in fetishists, is the arena where those fantasies and memories are
represented as corporal images instead of thought images. These corporal representations
are often cathexed by strong aggressive and libidinal charges. As a result of this,
63  In  this  regard,  see  Zetzel  and  Meissner  (1977).  Furthermore,  bear  this  in  mind 
when we later talk about the known Freudian work on the so‐called fortda game. 
fetishistic behaviour is often followed by strong guilt (see Kaplan & Sadock, 1997),
mostly due to threats of castration. Finally, Thomä and Kächele (1989, 1992) claim that
in fetishism is manifested the higher human imagination, whose subsequent (fetishistic)
symptom formation may depend on pre-Œdipus or Œdipus conflicts in which the fetish
object is chosen. In its pathological form, it frequently starts in adolescence and mainly
concerns the male sex, but also with cases related to the female sex in which it speaks of
a fetishist female according to Solomon and Patch (1971) and Lalli (1999). In the end,
according to Sarteschi and Maggini (1982), the fetish sometimes represents the phallus, at
other times not, albeit, in these latter cases, the illusion of its presence is maintained. The
fetishist’s Ego, in accordance with the reality, admits that the female has no penis, but,
notwithstanding this, he (or she) is deceived that she has at least one penis, the illusion
being furnished by the fetish, which is the material substitute or surrogate of it. The fetish
maintains the illusion of the phallus’s presence, so that it can be both a mere symbol (as
in normal cases) and a material surrogate (in degenerations). On the basis of clinical
observations made on subjects who underwent psychoanalytic treatment, the fear of
castration is brought back either to violent experiences (whick took place between two
and four years of age) that the child has been a witness to or victim of, or to severe
organic disorders, which, in any case, will determine a disharmonic structuration of the
image of the own body. From this, strong anxiety follows due to the view of that
“unexplainable otherwise” of the female. Finally, following Piscicelli (1994), a certain
degree of “fetishistic overvaluation” is usually also present in every normal love relation.
The pathological case takes place when the desire for the fetish replaces the drive
destination and becomes the unique interesting sexual object for the individual.
Other perspectives on fetishism

According to Glover (1933, 1949), at the foundations of fetishism, it relies on the basic
unconscious mechanism of displacement64 through which genital interests and incestuous
desires are degenerately displaced toward the upper or lower body parts. Above all he
stressed the symbolic meaning of the fetish which may be various but with a prevalence
for the phallic one, the latter being related to the presence of a female penis which, in a
certain sense, is considered mysteriously hidden within the mother’s body. This last
fantasy has a universal character in infancy,65 above all in male children, sometimes
degenerating into paraphilia in adults, and with a regressive degeneration of genital
Œdipus desires. According to Rosolato (1967, 1969) and Etchegoyen (1991), the fetish is
the “counterpart of the subject’s splitting”, in the sense that the fetishist recognizes the
castration but, because of his (or her) presentification of the imago66 of the female penis,
he (or she) imagines the one that does not exist. D’après Lacan, presentification is the
other face of what is disowned. The fetish, according to Lacan, presentificates (or
embodies) and, at the same time, veils the female penis. According to Rosolato, the fetish
manifests itself as separated from its corporeal support but, at the same time, is also in
metonymic continuity with the body67 (object fetish in degenerate cases, or symbol in
normal cases), and this is a fundamental consideration for our purposes because it is
64  According  to  Glover  (1953,),  the  displacement  mechanism  is  an  unconscious 
process with great applicative potentialities, above all for the symbolic function.  
65  See Glover (1953). 
66  According  to  Freud,  the  imago  is  an  unconscious  object  representation  (see 
Rycroft, 1968). 
67  Through clothes, shoes, etc. in degenerate cases. 

directly connected with the symbolic function when the degeneration into paraphilia does
not take place. Due to this continuity, if the fetish is a metonymy, then it is also a
metaphor for the mother’s lack of a penis because the former represents (presentificates)
the latter. Thus, the fetish’s creation accomplishes both a metonymic function and a
metaphoric one, with a prevalence of the former in degenerate cases and of the latter in
normal cases. With this, we are at the beginnings of the Lacanian symbolic register which
is based upon these last notions, as already said. In the Lacanian symbolic register, the
two tropes68 metonymy and metaphor are put, following Roman Jakobson, in
correspondence respectively with displacement and condensation, which are the two
main unconscious dynamic mechanisms of the primary process. 69 According to
Laplanche and Pontalis (1973), human desire is primarily structured by an unconscious
dynamic, being mainly expressed through metonymic processes. On the other hand, as
mentioned above, the metonymic process is based, according to Jakobson, on
displacement which can also be interpreted as a shift of unpleasant or painful sentiments
from the distressing object (e.g. the female penis) to another (e.g. the fetish), thereby
establishing a typical symbolic link. Furthermore, as we have repeatedly said above, the
fetish (symbolic or material) is the result of a displacement of the strong castration
anxiety, which D. W. Winnicott puts in close relationship with the transitional object to
establish the first forms of object relations. Finally, we outline R. M. Khan Masud’s
(1979) ideas on perversions. According to him, perversions are the result of an idolization
of an external real object which is characterized by an overcathexis. This idolization
occurs in place of any form of symbolization or imagination which are the normal
alternatives to degeneration when the transitional object-infantile fetish phase (see later)
is declining. Khan Masud noted an absence of transitional objects and toys in the
childhood of perverts, which is also typified by the absence of any form of initiative. In
every pervert, Khan Masud also detected a deficiency of elaboration of corporal
experiences in psychic fantasies. Their fantastic elaborations are trivial and repetitive, so
that their creative abilities are very poor. In perversions, there is a bad and incomplete
separation of the opposite elements of Me and not-Me, so that there is not a complete
separation between the external and internal reality sense. Khan Masud then identifies an
intrinsic deficiency of the pervert to focalize and tune their emotions during the
institution of any object relationship both intrapsychic and external. It is a typical feature
of the pervert’s object relation which Anna Freud (1937) brings back to a pervert’s
incapacity to love and to a great fear of emotions. On this Ego’s disability to support a
suitable cathexis of an external object or of its internal representatives (internal objects as
outcomes of symbolization or imagination) relies the main feature of the pervert’s object
relations. Khan Masud brings back these inabilities to an early defect of the ability of the
(bodily) Ego to perform integration processes, in turn due to a bad mother-child relation.
And this will be confirmed many times by other authors (above all, by P. Greenacre), as
we will see later.
68  En passant, we recall that metonymy and metaphor belong to the subcategory of 
tropes, this being included in the category of grammatical figures, in turn falling into 
the wider one of discourse (or rhetoric) figures. According to Roman Jakobson, such 
tropes are the two fundamental poles around which all languages revolve.  
69  See Part 2 of this paper. 

Fetishism in the culture
Other paradigms on fetishism besides the Freudian one have been formulated, like those
of Charles de Brosses, August Comte, Immanuel Kant and Karl Marx: in this regard, for
a brief account of these, see, for instance, Valeri (1979), Màdera (1977) and Galimberti
(2006). Taking these into account, together with the Freudian one, it is possible to
identify a common point amongst them. To be precise, the one according to which the
fetish70 is conceived as an object71 formed by a contradictory relationship with the reality,
or rather that gives, yes, a fictitious representation of reality but that makes a true
representation of it also possible. The fetish thus realizes a sort of synthesis (fetishistic
synthesis) between these two opposite tendencies which, although it is false in itself,
nevertheless anticipates a true relation between the human being and nature, thereby
constituting a first conceptual framework which makes the collection and classification of
positive observations possible. Fetishism is based on a kind of confusion between
“natural” and “supernatural”, between something having human nature and something
having superhuman nature, or something having animated nature and something having
inanimate nature. In Freud, then, such a position becomes more complex because it
implies an initial object splitting (Was-spaltung) which will be correlative to a subsequent
subject splitting (Ich-spaltung) that, in turn, turns out to be correlated with the former in
normal cases, but not in pathological ones. Finally, both in Freud and Marx, the fetish’s
genesis lies in the fictitious separation of the “part” from the “whole” (even if this is
meant to be related to different total objects, namely the person in Freud and the work in
Marx). And the latter is just a first form of the principle of inductive reasoning. On the
other hand, bearing in mind that mysterious meaning of the fetish (and its relationship
with the origins of religion and mythology), according to Greenacre (1971) and Freud
himself, attempts to give explanations to the consequent basic secrets provided by the
fetish itself lead to intellectual activity, first through sorcery, religion and mythology,
then through science. An emblematic example of this is provided by Freud himself in the
essay The Theme of the Three Caskets (of 1913), where, inter alia, he states that the
fundamental secrets are those on the origins of life and of destiny which are, in turn,
implicit in the impenetrable enigma of the riddle of the sphinx that Œdipus solved,
thereby obtaining the opportunity to live. From this, A. Gross stated that the secret of the
symbolism of mythology is, at the primitive level, in close relation with the processes and
organs of the body and whose meaning is connected both with the fear of death and life
relations. On the other hand, the secret is strictly related to the anal phase and its features,
first of all the faeces,72 and the anus, this last place of secrecy and fortress of defence.
The Phyllis Greenacre viewpoint

According to Greenacre73 (1971), fetishism should be treated from the point of view of
corporal image. During the changeover from the phallic to the Œdipus stage, a great
70 Which clearly has, as already said, a phallic meaning from the Freudian symbolic 
viewpoint. 
71 This last term might be understood in the wider general philosophical meaning. 
72  With its ambiguous meaning which is also closely linked to the ambiguity of the 
fetish  itself,  to  its  dual  nature  (like  bisexuality),  in  coherence  with  its  symbolic 
function.  
73  The  work  (Greenacre  1971)  is  a  collectanea  of  some  of  the  main  works  of 
Phyllis Greenacre (1894‐1989), amongst which those on fetishism and creativity.  
castration problem subsists. This lies at the basis of every next Ego’s splitting acting on
an already instable, insecure and little structured bodily image formed during pregential
phases. In this moment of psychosexual development, the first forms of displacement and
condensation processes take place in relation to the formation of a corporal image from
its component parts, and in delineating its borders which, in turn, induce variations in the
subjective perception of dimensions. The choice of fetish is quite undetermined, even if
its nature will be determined by the outcomes of previous destabilizing prephallic
castration anxieties. In Greenacre (1971), the author presents further considerations on
fetishism, highlighting the mainly psychosomatic nature of it. To be precise, it is the
result of a defect of the corporal image which the subject will remedy through a fetish
creation in the absence of symbolic elaboration. In pregenital phases, there is a particular
corporal sensibility which reaches its highest value during the phallic stage. In the same
period, the formation of the corporal sense of Self takes place, crossed by strong
aggressive and libidinal energies which, if not suitably managed, may lead to dissolution
sentiments, hence to degenerative phenomena. In Greenacre (1971), the author confirms
the primary role played by the formation of the bodily image of Self which presents both
an internal and external aspect. Thanks to this, the child starts to be aware of his (or her)
own genitals and of the visage. The core of this sense of identity is strongly structured
and influenced, from the anal stage until the phallic-Œdipus period, by many factors
concerning the external world. In this phase, the child is aware of herself or himself as
existing in a world of external objects. He or she hears have memories and thoughts,
learns to evaluate her or his own dimensions, has knowledge of sexual differences and of
many parts of her or his own body. In creative subjects, this image of Self is quite
unstable and susceptible to possible diversifications. In Greenacre (1971), the author
expresses the idea that bodily Ego’s disorders (at the root of fetishism) are mainly due to
the inadequacy of relationships with parents during the first two years of existence which
will be at the basis of a primary emphasis given to castration anxieties and to
complementary narcissistic defences. In Greenacre (1971), the author summarizes
perversions and their dynamic aspects. In particular, for our purposes, it is important to
outline some points of her study, particularly those examining material fetish and its
comparison with imagination. The fetish, as stated, develops from an imperfect formation
of the own corporal image during the related libidinal phases, above all connected to
genital organization, with more or less severe repercussions on reality sense. The main
feature of fetishism is first an excellent degree of primary identification, which is a
normal characteristic of every human being, but which, in pathological degeneration, is
distinguished by a prolongation of the introjective-projective phase (typical preconscious
mechanism of primary identification), in which there is an incomplete separation between
the own Ego and the Other, that is to say, a poor separation of the elements of the
opposite pair (I, not-I) or (Me, not-Me), as outlined above. This is mainly due to the fact
that a fetishist is unable to make a clear distinction between opposite images that he (or
she) has of female genital organs, as Freud himself claimed in 1938, notwithstanding he
(or she) is able to distinguish between males and females as mental categories, but not to
compare their genital apparatuses. All this, according to Freud (and as confirmed later by
other psychoanalysts like K. Abraham and S. Payne), will be at the basis of a weakness of
the Ego. In 1965, R. A. Spitz pointed out that visual abilities are focalized quite early, so
that the recognition of anatomic gender differences (above all in genitals) is available
quite early for the child. This is a notable fact for organizing and structuring own corporal
image which starts from the previous recognition of the bodily image of genital settings.
All this takes place from before four years old, in fact from about two years old, when the
child is also able to roughly recognize her or his mirror image. Nevertheless, the

recognition of genital settings, in both our and other organization, starts before the
corporal one. The child takes this as a system of comparison to be used for the formation
of a sense of reality. In Glover (1933), the author states that perversions help in taking
together the various partialities and objects (like the many external perceptions) which
come from the development of a sense of reality, also through symbolic formation
processes. According to Glover, the formation of a sense of reality depends on the
emancipation of a system of bodily and environmental perception from excessive
interference through introjection and projection mechanisms. According to M.S. Mahler
and P. Greenacre, the second and fourth years of existence are crucial for human psychic
development in which there is a high corporal sensitivity and confusion about the bodily
organization, especially the genital one. The question of the lack of a female penis
strongly requires a solution. The emotional shock involved in it may compromise the
reality sense formation. The aggressiveness, usually present in these periods, together
with other defence mechanisms, may hinder a degeneration of this trauma toward
paraphilic disorders. In any case, the strong castration anxiety anguish requires a
displacement to be cathexed. According to Greenacre (1971), the genetic bases for
fetishism are mainly twofold, and take place between two and four years old. The first
concerns the frequent and careful view of the genitals of the opposite sex. The second
may concern the occasional sight of a severe bleeding wound on one’s own body or of
another person. The vision, in this period, plays a very fundamental role, even before the
development of other senses. In the first and more common case, the child focalizes other
genitals, comparing them with their own. In such a manner, when one sees other genitals,
the not-Me (or not-I) is much clearer than the Me (or I), and if the emotional involvement
of this comparison is not sufficiently controlled, a confusion about own genital setting
will be possible, giving rise to paraphilic degenerations. Analogously, in the second case,
the damage undergone by the not-Me might give rise to veiled fantasies which, in turn,
may contribute to increased confusional images of one’s own body. If not adequately
controlled and assisted by (good) motherly cares (see Winnicott’s holding74 notion), these
traumatic experiences may induce great anxiety and guilt feelings, also thanks to the fact
that, in this period (from about two to four years old), there is a major sensorial
susceptibility in concomitance with the beginnings of the formation of own corporal
image. Around two years old, the first steps and words start to appear, while the genital
(phallic and vaginal) physiological pressures will appear around four years old. During
this period, all the above-mentioned influences may flow out in intense fears of castration
which may also assume a certain aspect of reality that will lead to paraphilic disorders,
including (material) fetish formation. The material fetish must be so real to avoid such
strong and unbearable fears of castration. Nevertheless, as already stated several times,
this fetish creation may be accomplished too by means of symbolic elaboration, most of
the time originally due to the simple search for a missing mother penis.
74  Also known as holding environment.  

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Σύµβολου: An attempt toward the early Origins: Part 2
Giuseppe Iurato1
University of Palermo
Abstract
In continuation of what has been said in the first part of this two-part paper, herein we
present further considerations on symbolism, reconsider some related psychodynamic
case reports with some possible variants about their interpretations, and will apply what is
said to some further speculations on mathematical symbolism and thought. In this second
part, we continue with the numeration of the first part Σύµβολου, 1.
Introduction
On symbolism: further considerations
On sign and symbol. Following Harré, Lamb and Mecacci (1983), in psychology, a sign
is considered to have a symbolic nature when we are not interested in its referential
meaning but, rather, in the content borne by it, whose communicative aim, being a
psychological factor, could be unconscious. In the psychological context, the symbol
should be considered in a different manner to the sign, and the content should be
considered in a different way to the referent, the latter being correlated to the sign
through the reference relationship, whereas the content is correlated to the symbol
through the unconscious component of the former. All that is in agreement with the
Jungian theory of symbolism according to which reference and use of signs of direct
thought should be ascribed to the action of conscious thought, whereas symbols should be
attributed to the joint and inseparable action of conscious and unconscious thought.
Moreover, according to these authors, there is a strict connection between the symbolic
usage of signs and altered states of consciousness, the latter being seen as more desirable
because they allow us to bypass the ordinary vigil (often unpleasant and anxiogenic
organization of the Ego. These are often identified, in early adolescence (puberty), as
initial psychotic events,2 in alternation with the first normal phases of reasoning,
abstraction and hypothesis-making abilities, together with the formation of first feelings
of empathy and Ego’s decentralization. And all this is in accordance with what has been
said above about Ego’s splitting. Following Galimberti (2006), Freud himself
distinguished between sign and symbol, the former being understood as indicating a more
or less direct presence of something, while the latter refers to something which, in turn,
may refer to another something achieved only by means of an interpretation. As stated
above, displacement and condensation are the main mechanisms through which the
1
Correspondence  concerning  this  article  should  be  addressed  to  Giuseppe 
Iurato,  Department  of  Physics  and  Department  of  Mathematics  and  Computer 
Science, University of Palermo, Palermo, Italy, E‐mail: giuseppe.iurato@unipa.it
2  According  to  Mastrangelo  (1975),  the  presence  of  psychoses  in  childhood  is 
nowadays a matter of fact.   
primary process acts. In the first of these,3 the part represents the whole or vice versa, or
rather a given idea, object or image is instinctually replaced by another effectively
associated with it, even if with modalities that are often not logical. On the other hand, in
the second one,4 there is convergence and merging of the drive’s cathexes related to
different objects or aims. According to Lalli (1993), metaphor and metonymy are the
main mechanisms of symbolic activity; at the basis of metaphor, then, lie associations by
similitude and analogy. Further, metaphor denotes a thing which is different from the
named one, transferring the concept that this thing means out of its usual or normal
meaning. Instead, metonymy, in naming a thing or a concept, makes a displacement on
the basis of a conceptual relationship. In doing so, the effect is named for the cause, the
possessor for the possessed thing, the producer for the product, and, above all, the
abstract for the concrete.5 Finally, due to the replacement of a total object with a partial
one, in fetishism there is the tendency to replace a part with the whole, albeit the inter-
individual relationship is kept, and this principle of the method, as already said, might be,
in some respects, compared with the inductive method. On the other hand, following
Piscicelli (1994), the displacement of a desire upon a generic image is one of the main
semantic mechanisms of signification widely involved in symbolic formation. Through
fetish formation, the transfer of the Ego upon the object fetish takes place in degenerative
cases, or upon symbolic formations in normal cases (see also above Khan Masud’s ideas
on perversions).
Again on symbolism
Following Rogers (1978), the consideration of language in relation to primary and
secondary psychic processes requires a rethinking of the theory of symbolism. For
instance, to rectify that sort of one-sidedness of symbolism (as in the 1916 Ernest Jones
work on the theory of symbolism), Rycroft (1968b) argues against this unilateral view
that sexual symbolism belongs solely to the primary process and occurs only by virtue of
repression, in dreams. Rycroft (1968a, 1968b) and Beres (1950) instead assume
symbolism to be a general ability of mind which is based on perception and which may
be used both by the primary process and by the secondary process. According to Rogers
(1978), a literary symbol or a piece of symbolic behaviour can, and often will, reflect
both primary and secondary processes functioning simultaneously, analogously to the
action of a bi-logical process as formulated by I. Matte Blanco (see Iurato, 2013).
Symbolism is a ubiquitous process present in all human activity. Following Petocz
(2004), amongst the diversity of meanings of symbol, Whitehead (1927, p. 60)
highlighted the mystical character that it had, commenting on “a certain unstable mixture
of attraction and repulsion” in our attitude towards symbolism. He states that symbolism,
from sense presentation to physical bodies, is the most natural and widespread of all
symbolic modes. Langer (1942) states that symbolization is the essential act of thought:
the symbol-making function is one of man’s primary activities, like eating, looking, or
moving about. It is the fundamental process of mind, and goes on all the time. The human
brain function is constantly carrying out a process of symbolic transformation of
experimental data that have come to it. The symbolization is the most natural outcome of
how the human mind has transformed that primary need to express oneself.
3 See Solomon & Patch (1971). 
4 See Arieti (1969), especially Volume III as regards creativity. 
5 This last displacement is of fundamental importance for symbolic function. 

A comparison with autism and a phylogenetic view
The relationships between creative thought and the spectrum of psychotic disorders have
been known since Freud’s work. For instance, many valuable studies have been pursued
in this direction and, in this regard, the communication of Carapezza and Cuccio (2010)
is a good essay on the chief studies (see references therein6) concerning some aspects of
the creative abilities of individuals who are shown to have Autistic Spectrum Disorders7
(ASDs). For instance, it turns out that many subjects with ASDs have a peculiar
characteristic, called weak central coherence, which means that such subjects have a
preference for details without being able to lay out them into a coherent and unitary
frame.8 It seems that such a strong preference for and attention to details are also typical
characteristics of creative thought, which, in turn, would derive both from a sensorial
hypersensibility and from a certain tendency towards a hypersystematization thanks to
which they are able to identify structural regularities and symmetries. On the other hand,
these last considerations might have certain common points with what we have already
said above if one considers the disavowal mechanism as strictly correlated with a sort of
search for a penis where it is missing, seen therefore as a tendency towards an anatomic
detail as well as the result of a lack of regularity which stems from a comparative
examination of sexual gender differences. What is said above regarding non-adult
subjects with , who also have an uncommonly high intellectual level,9 could be
interpreted as the extreme outcome of a drastic and emotively poorly managed splitting of
the Ego which, nevertheless, does not degenerate into paraphilia because of a
hypersymbolization as compensation for fetishistic tendencies. From a phylogenetic
viewpoint, symbolism embeds its roots in the mists of time. Indeed, symbols seem to be a
psychic legacy dating back to the archaic origins of human beings. The history of
religions, folklores and mythologies provides interesting sources connected to the first
primitive initiation rites: in this regard, see Ferrero (1995), Marchesini (1901), Valeri
(1979), Màdera (1977) and Eliade (1976). In particular, very close relationships exist
between totemism and fetishism; in this regard see Eliade (1976), Abraham (1978) and
Casonato (1992). Furthermore, fetishism also has deep historical roots in ethnic-social-
anthropological and linguistic contexts, from which it has gradually earned its pre-
6  See,  above  all,  the main researches  made by  Baron‐Cohen, Ashwin,  Tavassoli  and 
Chakrabati (2009), Frith (1989) and Happé and Vital (2009). 
7  This  spectrum  has  a  non‐empty  intersection  with  the  spectrum  of  psychotic 
disorders  (   as  Psychotic  Spectrum  Disorders):  for  instance,  introversion  and 

deficiency of social relationships are elements of   
8 And this seems analogous to the fragmentary and disjointed corporal image which 
fetishists have.  
9 Following Mastrangelo (1975), this is one of the features of infantile schizophrenia, 
together  with  a  phobic  symptomatology  and  a  loss  of  relations  with  the 
environment. From the psychodynamic viewpoint, the transitional (Winnicott) and 
persecutory  (Klein)  object  phenomenologies  are  also  invoked  to  explain  certain 
damages to the object relationships involved in these disorders. Furthermore, until 
six years old, subjects with   are unable to distinguish the meanings of personal 
pronouns  in  relation  to  others,  because  he  or  she  has  a  severe  impairment  of  the 
own  identity  perception  in  respect  to  the  otherness.  The  only  means  thanks  to 
which  they  establish  relations  are  exclusively  toys  and  not  words.  Hence,  they  do 
not develop an albeit minimal separation between I and not‐I, that is to say, they do 
not recognize the otherness.  
eminent symbolic function during the course of history. However, the sources of
fetishism confirm the essential intermediary nature of the fetish (hence, of the phallus)
between humans and (divine) nature. Furthermore, according to the ethnoanthropological
research, fetishism is not venerated because it is considered to be the place or the abode
of the divinity but rather for the protection that one expects to have (hence to avoid an
anxiety feeling). The symbol draws its origins from religious symbolism10 as a
prolongation of the dialectic of the so-called hierophanies (or theophanies). A
hierophany is something which manifests the sacred like myths, rites, cults and so on,
through which heterogeneous plans and apparently irreducible realities are identified,
assimilated and unified. Just from these historical bases come the origins of symbolism
according to C.G. Jung, in which the concept of psychoid (which is a particular psychotic
attributive dimension that should be meant from a well-defined phylo-ontogenetic
sense11) plays a fundamental role.12 The fetish is then represented as one of the first
coarse forms of religion, according to Musatti (1977), hence an intermediary between the
human being and the otherness. In this last sense, taking into account what was just said
about fetishism, religion, mythology and initiation rites,13 it is not possible to leave aside
the work of Thomas Mann and his Moon-grammar (see Sweet, 1982; McDonald, 1999).
This author, starting from the ancient Egyptian, Mesopotamian and Assyric-Babylonian
mythologies to Revealed Sacredness, in his 1943 four-part novel Joseph and His
Brothers, amongst other things argues on the possible origins of the common conscious
language of ancient Near East people from initiation rites of a fetishistic nature, which
have then been acquired by other religious doctrines. Mann distinguishes between a
Daylight-grammar and a Moon-grammar, through which the spirits communicate with
human beings, coherently with that intermediary role played by fetish mentioned above.
The first has an exoteric character and is quite familiar to us in the form of Scriptures,
traditions, events, worships, and so on. The second has instead an esoteric nature and
regards small groups, prayer, silence, meditation, even dreams, and is called by E. Fromm
“God’s forgotten language” (see Fromm, 1951). Some have argued that the first special
gift of the Holy Spirit in the Bible was Joseph’s ability to interpret dreams, so that we
have a very coarse precursor of the next Freudian dream interpretation. Finally, an
interesting study on the influences of religious-mystical and psychotic experiences (like
those of altered consciousness states) on the primary process of language, emotion and
body boundary imagery, in the wake of what was just said above in relation to
phylogenetic aspects of fetishism (and other aspects, like those related to transitional
phenomena), has been made by Cariola (2012).
On mathematical symbolism, creativity and other

On mathematical symbolism. There have been several authors who have treated the
relationships between exact and natural sciences and psychoanalysis: amongst them,14 C.
G. Jung, C. A. Meier, W. Pauli, I. Matte Blanco, E. Von Domarus, S. Ferenczi, I.
Hermann, J. Lacan, M. Klein and W. R. Bion. According to Canestri and Oliva (1991),
10 See Ferrero (1895) and Eliade (1976). 
11 For the notions of phylogeny and ontogeny and their possible relationships from a 
psychological  viewpoint,  see,  for  example,  Gould  (1977),  Fossi  (1983,  1984), 
Piscicelli (1994) and Petocz (2004).  
12 See La Forgia (1991). 
13 For these, see Piscicelli (1994). 
14 See also Rosen (1954, p. 139) for further references. 

who analysed the inhibitions in second degree school mathematics, it is possible to speak
of a certain “mathematical anxiety” felt by those who use mathematical formulas, like
for every and , which refers to a kind of trauma
due to the emotive impact with something whose existence, that is the meaning of the
formula, is misunderstood; and this, notwithstanding the fact that they showed a certain
desire towards mathematics. To find such a meaning, the student is forced to compare
herself or himself with an “exterior”, that is the mathematical reality, which has its
specific meaningful organizations. For her or him, such a meaning hasn’t been
symbolically included into the formulas but rather it has fully and defensively taken the
place of the formula itself. Thus, we descry certain analogies with aspects of disavowal.
In their important paper, Canestri and Oliva (1991) also analysed some youngsters
suffering from disorders belonging to , detecting a common
feature, that is to say, their inability to make suitable links and connections, as well as to
integrate the various senses, the latter being a characteristic identified by D. Meltzer in
his studies on autism. The authors, in analysing their case studies, observed as the usual
processes followed in solving more or less correctly certain mathematical questions were
characterized by sequentiality and continuity laws in turn inferred by perceptive rules. If
one asks them the rationale behind these procedures, they are unable to give a correct
answer: simply, for them, an algebraic equation is true or false depending on whether
they consider a mathematical formula as a concrete indivisible object (we say, the
missing female penis). Canestri and Oliva hence observe that this fact seems to refer to
the H. Segal symbolic equation of psychotic thought that has been recalled in the first part
of this paper. Canestri and Oliva repeatedly refer toof cases in which the students feel
inadequacy, shame and guilt senses in front of the question of establishing the truth or
falsity of an algebraic equation. It is as if the notion of “equation with its resolution” was
deposited or stored in some part of the mind (unconscious) and is re-evocable only by
means of well-determined perceptive stimuli. In learning mathematics, it is necessary to
refrain from the sensual gratification provided by sensorial perception. The mental
operations of abstraction and formalization impose the abandonment of the known and
concrete for the unknown and abstract, thus entailing a certain tolerance of the lack of the
object (we again say, of the female penis). The authors refer to having the impression that
many students do not endure such a sensorial deprivation, trying immediately to rebuild
up the lost concrete object but not according to a right mental elaboration as above
recalled. They immediately follow the known and well-established rules and
institutionalized practices, without being able to autonomously and originally create new
connections, possible analogies, comparisons and relationships, above all in the face of a
new and complex problem. In conclusion, at the basis of these learning mathematics
problems, Canestri and Oliva hypothesize a disorder of the symbolic function very
similar to that involved in psychotic disorders: in coping with a mathematical task
requiring a high symbolic performance, many students feel an unmanageable mental pain
that triggers a specific defence mechanism (we say, the disavowal one) that avoids the
pain with the construction of a new surrogating reality which is plausible at the
perceptive level but misunderstands the true reality, that is to say, the existence of the
meaning of mathematical formulas. What was said by these authors is clearly coherently
placeable within the framework here outlined and based on the disavowal mechanism.
Again, the authors affirm that the various possible solutions and strategies adopted by
students to overcome this mathematical pain sometimes have a “psychotic” nature, other
times a “ neurotic” nature. According to them, this “mental pain”, felt in the face of an
abstract reasoning, seems to be quite widespread. Canestri and Oliva try to explain these
facts through different psychodynamic models, including the Freudian one based on
Mourning and Melancholia (of 1917) related to the loss of a loved object and the
consequent pain. Nevertheless, in reference to Freud’s work, they do not make any
allusion to disavowal. Thereafter, they quote the fundamental work of Melanie Klein,
who considered symbolism to be at the root of every creative process. She brings back
symbolization disorders to persecutory anxieties regarding sexual fantasies related to
primary scenes. Connected with the Kleinian thought is that of H. Segal, the main traits
of which we have outlined in the first part. Then, W. R. Bion (1962, 1963, 1967) brings
back learning obstacles to difficulties of the relationship between mother and child. In
Bion (1967), the author states that the mathematical objects arise from certain duplicity
relations: for instance, the number two of breasts, the two eyes, the two feet, etc., and this
is coherent with the anthropomorphic origins of certain elementary mathematical notions.
On the other hand, the above-mentioned Bion’s notion of duplicity relation is, in many
respects, similar to that of Hermann15 (1989) and named dual procedure, about which we
shall briefly speak in the next sections. According to Bion, the right mental predisposition
for doing mathematics is the result of an overcoming of the state of frustration (for the
object’s loss) ruled by the sufferance and endurance which will lead to psychic
modification and elaboration of secondary thought, whereas its intolerance will bring to a
rapid behaviour of escape marked by the destructivity of reality data and impossibility of
reflection. Bion (1962, 1967) makes interesting comparisons between the psychoanalytic
interpretation and the insights that take place in science following what Poincaré said in
this regard in his famous 1914 Science and Method. Bion makes frequent use of
epistemological and mathematical considerations in his work, for instance, in relation to a
notable epistemological consideration of Poincaré about the origins of a new
mathematical result. To be precise, according to Poincaré, a mathematical result must join
together already known elements which were previously disjoined and apparently
unrelated amongst them; this combination will be made in such a manner as to establish
order where was there apparent disorder. So, we are suddenly aware of the right place
that every single piece must be within their complex set. Like our senses, so our mind
would be frail and astray if wasn’t there harmony in such a set; as in myopia, similarly
our mind would see only the near details which would be at once forgotten as soon as it
turned towards the farthest if there weren’t ordering capacity. The only facts which
deserve attention are therefore those bringing order to this complex set, thus making it
approachable. This is what Poincaré says and that it can hardly be contested.
Furthermore, if one briefly looks at the foundations of Gestalt psychology, it is easy to
descry, in the above Poincaré considerations, the bases of a paradigmatic shift as occurs
in the Kuhnian scientific revolution theory. On the other hand, from what will be said in
what follows, this Poincaré frame might also be brought back to the complex formation
of bodily image, while Bion, instead, tries to put an analogy between this Poincaré
synthesis and the Kleinian transition from a paranoid-schizoid position to a depressive
one. Bion moreover states that the possible relations which will link together the elements
of the above-mentioned complex set quoted by Poincaré are mainly carried out through
unconscious processes which, in turn, operate by means of the so-called alpha functions
whose main role is to organize the various sensorial and emotive elements of the
perceptive field, providing relations and connections amongst them in such a manner as
to structurate this field (the Gestalt). Thanks to this alpha function, when normally
15
  The  original  notion  dates  back  to  1924.  Imre Hermann  (1899‐1984)  was  one  of 
the main Hungarian psychoanalysts, a pupil of S. Ferenczi and M. Klein, who carried 
out  remarkable  studies on the psychoanalytic foundations of rational  thought.  The 
thought of this author has still been little considered by the history of psychology.
operating, it will be possible to establish relationships between external and internal
reality. The mother will be the first primary object whose mature alpha function will
mould that of the child and that will allow the unpleasant feelings, including the absence
of the primary object, to be overcome. When this alpha function fails, a thought
disturbance takes place with the presence of an “object that misunderstands” which
belongs to the wider class of the so-called beta elements. According to Bion, the primary
object would be the breast which, when it is absent, will be considered as a separated and
deanimated partial object. This Bionian deanimation, meant to be a defence mechanism
in coping with the unpleasantness of the absence of the animated object (that is, the
animated breast joined to the mother body), would give rise to abstract and formal
thought. According to Canestri and Oliva (1991), this deanimation might be meant as an
unaware splitting between the meaning (semantics) and the abstract formula (syntax) that
represent it. Therefore, the epistemophilic instinct,16 which is, roughly speaking, curiosity
about the object, will be suppressed and replaced by a simple mechanical manipulation of
the forms and relations considered as things in themselves, used as such and split from
their meaning. The normality is mainly ruled by a correct inter-relationship between
semantics and syntax through pragmatics: for instance, in schizophrenia, the fundamental
action of the latter fails to integrate the first two (see Falzone, 2004) which remain
unrelated. Following Bionian thought, Canestri and Oliva (1991) state that a bad outcome
of this splitting as well as a defective functioning of the alpha function are at the root of
many errors and much misunderstanding in mathematics. On the basis of this, we add
what follows, namely that the Freudian epistemophilic drive performs a primary splitting
between semantics and syntax in the following sense: when the primary object is
perceptively absent, then, to avoid the consequent loss anxiety, the individual
ontologically tries to re-evoke it. To do so, there are two possible ways, one consisting in
immediately finding some material surrogate of it (with possible degenerations into
paraphilia), and the other consisting in symbolically thinking about it. This last way will
lead to the ontic identification17 (or definition) of that entity which will replace such an
object with the formation of the related semantic and syntactic components of it. Further
relationships between the syntactic and the semantic structures, ruled by pragmatics, will
turn out to be of fundamental importance above all for the reality test. Canestri and Oliva
(1991) pointed out that concrete and perceptive elements prevail in symbolic thought.
They say that often there is an increase of physical exuberance and restlessness used as a
primitive muscular defence toward mental stimuli lived as concrete objects. Mathematical
corrections and attempts to establish connections or relationships are associated with
16 Following Bott Spillius, Milton, Garvey, Couve and Steiner (2011) and Galimberti 
(2006),  the  epistemophilic  instinct  is,  for  Freud,  a  part‐instinct,  which  is  a  part  of 
libido concerning voyeurism and exhibitionism, as a prolongation of sexual curiosity 
or  meant  as  sublimation  of  oral  drive.  It  becomes  a  central  instinct  in  Kleinian 
thought where it is seen as exploratory and necessary but also inevitably aggressive, 
involving phantasies  of getting inside the mother to  find and  often  to take over or 
destroy  the  riches  within  –  notably  mother’s  babies  and  father’s  penis.  The 
inevitable fear of retaliation may then inhibit curiosity and the capacity for learning. 
Within  Kleinian  work,  such  an  epistemophilic  instinct  plays  a  fundamental  role  in 
symbol formation and in general learning, thanks to the sexual curiosity upon which 
they  rely.  See  Bott  Spillius  et  al.  (2011)  for  further  interesting  information  on 
symbolism from S. Freud to M. Klein and H. Segal.  
17 In the sense of Heidegger’s ontological difference between ontological truth and 
ontic truth. Every definition of each entity is always at the ontic level. 
unpleasant sensations of a persecutory type. Each student lives this as he or she had
generically made “something evil” whose bad sensations hinder every improvement.
Following Bion, the learning seems hindered by the presence of beta elements instead of
alpha elements. We remember that, according to Bion, mathematical objects are the
outcomes of the action of alpha function upon sensorial and perceptive impressions,
while the action of beta function provides reality elements charged by persecutory and
unpleasant features. In such a manner, the Bionian thought on mathematics is, in many
respects, a forerunner of embodied mathematics. The concrete, imitative and greatly
repetitive aspects of the wrong procedures adopted in solving mathematical questions
often have the hallucinatory function of reproducing the lost object without taking into
account its absence, that is, there is an incomplete elaboration of the object lack.
According to Canestri and Oliva, these mathematical errors and misunderstandings are
mainly due to a bad formation of the Gestalt as, for example, provided by the Meltzerian
notion of “disassembly of senses” whose main result would be just this lack of Gestalt.
These authors say too that this last state is not only typical of subjects having or
but is the outcome of a mechanism susceptible to being active also in the absence
of a specific pathology but when the performance of high abstraction tasks is required,
and this corroborates what is expected by us in considering disavowal a general psychic
mechanism according to Laplanche and Pontalis (1973). Again according to Canestri and
Oliva, the great number of mathematical rules for signs, brackets, operations and so on
needed for a correct development and resolution of a mathematical expression, if not well
organized according to a form semantically and syntactically correct, will act on the mind
like a disorganized realm of undifferentiated, undistinguishable and meaningless stimuli.
On the other hand, the epistemological structure of physics just relies on a particular and
complex relational net between syntactic and semantic structures linked together through
certain correspondence rules having an operational character (see (Morgan & Morrison,
1999)) which we would like to hypothesize is moulded on the basis of the above pattern
of formation of the syntax and semantic primary structures.
Further notes on mathematical symbolism

Later on, Canestri and Oliva (1991) re-present their considerations in the light of H.
Segal’s work on symbolism whose main lines were outlined in the first part of this paper.
In discussing his thought, we have referred to a meaningful clinical case in which a
schizophrenic patient identified a violin with his penis. This means that he found some
element common both to the violin and the penis which has obscured all the others that
made these two entities distinct, thus passing to an identification of the whole only on the
basis of this primary common element. For instance, such a common element might be
the geometric or material – hence perceptive – analogy of form between them, which
prevails over all the other possible discriminating elements.18 Therefore, from a
perceptive element of equality, the schizophrenic patient has passed to an identification of
meaning of the two actions, namely playing a violin and masturbation, thus ignoring
every minimal pragmatic contextuality. There is, in short, a substantial lack of abstract
elaboration. This is the main feature that identifies, in a given social-cultural context, a
18 This  is  also  coherent  with  what  reported  in  (Iurato  2013)  where  has  been 
discussed  the  basilar  fact  that  a  schizophrenic  patient  mainly  use  symmetric  and 
generalized principles in her or his reasoning, this implying, in turn, an impossibility 
to conceive the notion of power set. 
psychotic disorder that, nevertheless, may be considered with a certain degree of
acceptability in some social-cultural contexts and, above all, in children. In fact, the latter
often identify the name with the (named) thing: for instance, for the child, the name
“father” coincides only with her or his physical personal father, i.e. the child is unable to
consider the name “father” as having something to do with the relational structure of
human society, hence of interpersonal nature.19 In this regard, Canestri and Oliva refer to
an analogous case which takes place in consideration of the formula which is
directly equated with instead to give rise to the latter through detailed
calculations starting from the former,20 thereby ignoring the deep relational structure
existing between these two entities. These modes of reasoning are coming back to slight
forms of a psychotic mechanism that these authors would consider to be present in every
human being but not in a psychopathological manner;21 and this is also in line with I.
Matte Blanco’s bi-logical process theory. Canestri and Oliva say that such types of
mathematical errors are mainly due to wrong thought modalities which resemble
psychotic ones. And this is a further confirmation of our main hypothesis of this paper,
i.e. to put the disavowal mechanism at the primary basis of abstract thought as well as a
general psychic mechanism. Furthermore, the basic work of Canestri and Oliva (1991),
besides confirming many points raised in this paper, makes a comparison with other
psychological perspectives, such as the cognitive one, highlighting many common points
with the psychoanalytic standpoint. In particular, the cognitive perspective also points out
the action of certain defence mechanisms to avoid painful stimuli, including the so-called
cognitive avoidance proposed by M. H. Erdelyi (1985). Retaking into account what is
said above, the paper of Canestri and Oliva above all stresses a possible similar psychotic
mechanism implying a lost object-induced splitting thanks to which it will be possible to
give rise to semantic and syntactic structures of abstract thought. Their line of thought is
very similar to the one followed in this paper and is based on disavowal mechanisms as
well as being coherent with what will be said later about the relations with the bodily
image formation. As further confirmation of this pursued line of thought, we report the
main points delineated in the very interesting paper by V. H. Rosen (1954). First of all, he
states that the concept of number normally arises in connection with certain stages of the
maturation of the perception apparatus during the Œdipal period, and this, as well as what
will be said, is of fundamental importance for the main arguments that we want to claim
here. Indeed, the author goes on to say that in those with a special mathematical gift, it is
probable that this maturational sequence takes place at an earlier period in Ego
development so that along with the precocious concepts of number and quantity there
remain certain archaic Ego defence mechanisms (amongst which we would want to
include disavowal) which are later utilized in creative aspects of the (mathematical)
process. A large part of the ordinary process of mathematical thought in these gifted
individuals is preconscious and utilizes a capacity for decathexis of the conscious
perceptual system. The “illumination” experience is a creative act, as is inspiration in
other fields, and utilizes the Ego’s capacity for controlled regression to unformalized
infantile modes of perceiving space and number. It is a highly overdetermined psychic
19 In this sense, a connection with C. Lévi‐Strauss’s structural anthropology theory is 
possible,  above all  with  his  assumption  according to  which  the Œdipus  complex  is 
the  cornerstone  of  the  passage  from  nature  to  culture,  providing  the  notion  of 
relational structure. This is in coherence with what said in this paper.  
20 In this regard, see also what is said in Iurato (2013). 
21  Which  requires  a  certain  repeated  and  systematic  presence  in  the  time  to  be 
defined as such (see DSM‐V options).  
event which involves all three structural systems as well as the subject’s historical
individuality. Rosen reports the clinical data of a case study relating to a mathematician
with suspected latent psychosis. This is a patient who has been a very sensitive child
since early infancy, showing an extreme intolerance of loud noise and brightness
(photophobia). Rosen (1954) also reports a series of dreams of the patient. In the first
one, he says: “I am lying on a bed in a darkened room with a window at one end of it
which is lit as if from the street. I am considering whether I should masturbate. Suddenly
from behind the drape next to the window, I see a silhouette against the light, the figure
of my father” (p. 130).
The patient refers to having suffered pavor nocturnus around the age of four of five. On
many occasions, when he was about five years of age, he was suddenly no longer allowed
to stay in his mother’s bed and the night terrors disappeared shortly after this. Rosen
interprets all this by bringing back it to scoptophilic primal scene interests with special
reference to his father’s erection (the silhouette); hence, the light from the street and the
window to direct primal scene curiosity and its replacement by curiosity in the
intellectual sphere. This latter is suggested in the reference to the delay in instinctual
gratification: “I am considering whether I should masturbate” (p. 130). The dream
appears to refer therefore to the process of sublimation and the turning of the night light
of the pavor nocturnus into intellectual light. Thereafter, the following two dreams were
recounted (p. 134):
I am sitting on the floor and see a snapping turtle through a crack in the door of a
room. It is my job to keep the turtle in the room, but it seemed to force its way out
despite my vigilance” and “I see a small “e” to the “x” power times an equation. I
realize that I should factor it out and that ‘e’ to the “x” power is a psychoanalyst
which must be taken into account in each factor (p. 134).
These dreams occurred shortly after the episode of sudden illumination of a complex
Riemannian geometry problem which employed the mind of the patient. For this purpose,
he needed a mathematical book that he wasn’t able to find easily where he stayed. A
sample copy was available in his hometown so he asked his father to send it as soon as
possible. But when he got it he suddenly had an insight into finding a short-cut method of
reaching the same result by an original method without even removing the wrapping
containing the book. The patient also says that as a child he had thought that all turtles
were snapping turtles but was fascinated by them and liked to keep one in a pail. The
turtle also reminded him of an individual who retires into his own shell and shuts out the
world (like his father). He had noticed that turtles blink in the sun and had associated this
with the darkness within their shells and to his own photophobia on exposure to bright
light. Turtles can see the outside world while they themselves remain unseen. The crack
in the door referred to early experiences of peeping at his sisters. The room recalled his
own bedroom at home, and his mother’s practice of watching him through a crack in the
door when he first went to kindergarten, because of his terror at being left by her. This is
what Rosen says about possible interpretations of these dreams. We instead would like to
consider a possible alternative interpretative hypothesis according to which a turtle, with

the pulling in and out of his head, might represent a female penis disappearing within the
mother body22 like in the Freudian cotton reel game that we will consider later. Then,
Rosen also makes a certain interpretation of the second dream, bringing back the to an
X-ray examination that the patient has undergone. We would like to propose other
possible additional variants. Rosen states that this second dream is presented to indicate
the relationship of the illumination experience to the primal scene problem. Later, Rosen
says that two themes are referred to which are of importance for the development of the
theoretical formulation which will follow: the first refers to the selective use of
perception in the service of drive and defence in scoptophilic fantasies, and the second to
the narcissistic withdrawal from the real darkness and light surrounding the functional
relationships of parental objects and their investment in the neutral symbols and
relationships of mathematical invention. We add what follows. If one looks at the
geometrical form of the graph of the real function (which was surely known to the
patient, given that he was a valid mathematician), it is not possible not to recognize an in-
erection phallic symbol.23 Then, the dream also compares this function with the
psychoanalyst who, clearly by transference, corresponds to a father figure, so that this
second dream should be more referred to the father’s phallus rather than an X-ray
examination. Afterwards, Rosen continues to interpret these and other dreams of this
patient substantially revolving around the Œdipus complex questions concerning the
patient of this interesting case report, to finish with a discussion on mathematical thought
on the basis of the previous studies made in this regard. Amongst them, we report both a
quotation by E. Kris (an exponent of Ego psychology), namely “that hypercathexis of
preconscious mental activity with some quantity of energy withdrawn from the object
world to the Ego – from the perceptive system to preconscious thinking – accounts for
some of the extraordinary achievements of mentation”, and a hypothesis, related to
creative thought and also confirmed by clinical data, according to which there are
suggestive borderline features as far as psychosis is concerned; a prominent sensory-
motor hypersensitivity is also a predisposing feature. Rosen also noticed the concomitant
presence of certain disorders in writing and reading in mathematically gifted subjects,
which have their origins during the early latency period with the still unresolved Œdipal
conflicts. Thereafter, in discussing the role played by the primary process in creative
thought, Rosen reviews many interesting case studies and testimonies amongst which we
recall only those relating to N. Lobachevsky’s work on non-Euclidean geometry and A.
Cayley’s work on algebra. Indeed, the former was built on a negation of a sensory reality
testing, namely that parallel lines can meet, while the latter is concerned with a particular
algebra of matrices which was seen, for many years, as a kind of bizarre algebraic oddity.
Such an algebra starts from a postulate, in “paranoiac” fashion, which appears to be an
absurd negation of the self-evident, namely that the products of two entities (the matrices)
are different depending upon the order in which the multiplication is performed. In both
cases, we have a negation of a fact considered to be evident and, notwithstanding these
22 In addition, one of the possible psychoanalytic meanings of the turtle is that of a 
mother with her values.  
23  Following  this  interpretation  line,  maybe  it  would  be  possible  to  extend  these 
considerations  related  to  the  real  exponential  function    to  the  complex  case  in 
order  to  account  for  the  celebrated  Lacan  equation  as  well  as  to 
give  a  psychodynamic  explanation  to  the  famous  conceptual  metaphor 
 which is at the basis of the framework of Lakoff and Núñez (2000). 
Elsewhere this possibility will be taken into account. 
appeared to be a direct negation of reality, they would have notable applications in
physics. As is well known, Freud himself gave great importance to negation for
consciousness development in his remarkable 1925 paper Negation, and, what has been
just said above is placeable within our framework based on disavowal because, as
Chemama and Vandermersch (1998) claim, this paper had really to do more with
disavowal than negation. Finally, as regards the main case study of his paper, Rosen
stresses the occurrence of primary scene fantasies, the consequent scoptophilic and
epistemophilic drives with related defence reactions (like pavor nocturnus, eye redness,
etc.) and certain perplexities in gender roles, considering them to be at the root of the
mathematical insight possessed by the patient. In addition and in relation to this, since
Rosen also stresses the psychoanalytic meaning of the bringing of the book by his father
in clarifying, inter alia, his doubts on gender roles, it is likely that this gender
ambivalence worrying the patient might also be related to sex or genital differences
which, as is well known, plays a fundamental role in the disavowal mechanism. So, we
say, in searching a missing mother penis (the book, as surrogate of the missing primary
object) in respect to the existent father’s one, which maybe will arrive (the sent book), the
patient carries out a symbolic elaboration upon this lack, whose insight will resolve his
anguish once he has found (in concomitance with the received but unwrapped book) it.
Finally, Rosen points out a possible origin of mathematical rules by means of reaction
formation to the primal scenes which, amongst other things, are closely related to a
castration complex because they furnish support to the consequent castration anxiety, this
being, in turn, strictly involved in disavowal.
On mathematical symbolism - thirdly

The history of mathematics comprises numerous examples and case studies regarding
concepts as well as notions having anthropomorphic sources. On the other hand, as
remembered by Piaget (1968), anthropomorphism has its roots deep in the history of
religions and mythologies, as also briefly recalled above (see also Rosen, 1954; Canestri
& Oliva, 1991). Many other studies on the history of mathematics, like those made in
Ifrah (1985), confirm the primary role that the human body has played in the origins of
the main elementary mathematical concepts, like those of number and order, up to the
latest results and examples achieved and outlined by the cognitive science of mathematics
as exposed by Lakoff and Núñez (2000). For instance, Georges Ifrah speaks of the
“bodily techniques of the number” as regards the archaic origins of human awareness of
numeric and ordinal notions, so confirming the anthropological assumptions mentioned
above. Furthermore, following Loria (1950), in the history of mathematics, the scholar
shouldn’t only stop at that epoch in which the human being hadn’t yet consciously
conceived of abstract numbers. In this period, the individual indicated numbers in a
phonetic manner, like, for example, in denoting two sheep, three goats, four oxen and so
on, or using proper names for certain objects to denote their parts or their components,
like, for instance, in associating the idea (or the function) of one, two, three and five
respectively to the word “I”,24 to the wings, to the trefoil, and to the hand. Hence,
according to Gino Loria, it would also be interesting to go further back, if one would
really like to have some form of protohistoric knowledge on the early origins of numbers.
According to Ifrah (1985), the numbers one and two were phylogenetically the first
numerical intelligible notions conceived by human beings. These are also the first two
numerical notions which are ontogenetically acquired by human beings, so that, in this
24 As a personal pronoun.  

case, the well-known 19th century scientists E. Haeckel and F. M. Müller’s fundamental
biogenetic law according to which ontogenesis is, in a certain sense, a recapitulation of
phylogenesis (at least, from a psychological viewpoint25) seems valid. The number one,
indeed, symbolizes the active man who is associated with creative work. It also denotes
herself or himself within the related social group, her or his own loneliness in the face of
life and death, and it also symbolizes both human bipedalism (or else, her or his standing
position) and the erect phallus which distinguishes man from woman. On the other hand,
the number two refers to the fundamental duality between male and female, the
contraposition, the complementarity and any other oppositions. Finally, since the mists of
time, the number three has been synonymous with plurality, with multitude, with cluster,
hence an unthinkable and unpredictable limit, so that this means that, in the human soul
or mind, the invention of numbers has marked a first stoppage beat at number two. In
short, the number three has a very fundamental meaning from the psychoanalytic
viewpoint. All this is also quite coherent with what Piaget said about the development of
number sense in children. Indeed, more or less between six and 12 months old, a child
acquires a certain global ability to recognize the space filled by things or persons which
are familiar to her or him, so that she or he is able to roughly conceive of a totality
(subitization26) from some of its parts. Thereafter, approximately between 12 and 18
months of age, she or he is capable of distinguishing between one, two and many other
objects as well as discerning and discriminating between two distinct groups of entities of
no more than four elements. But, at this stage, her or his numerical attitudes are still so
primitive as to be impossible for her or him to make a clear distinction between numbers
and clusters whose elements represent the former. Afterwards, a remarkable fact takes
place between two years and three years old, once the child has acquired the use of
speech and has learned to name the first numbers. To be precise, it has been noted that
often, for a certain time, the child has great difficulty in conceiving and saying just the
number three, starting with correctly counting from one and two but then forgetting the
number three, hence articulating one, two, four. In the light of what has been said above,
this might be explained by reconnecting the strong emotive-affective involvement present
at this age with the Œdipal phase of this period and related anxieties, if one takes into
account the genital psychoanalytical meaning of number three. In fact, according to
Paneth (1953) and Musatti (1977), one of the main psychoanalytical meanings of number
three is that of phallus27 (erectus) which, together with the two gonads, means capacity
for synthesis, perfection and creativity, whence the triadicity,28 closely correlated to
25  See  previous  footnote  11.  As  is  well  known,  this  law  is  ruled  out  from  a  proper 
biological  perspective;  in  this  regard,  see  Carlson  (1981).  However,  certain  of  its 
forms  are  assumed  to  be  more or less valid  in human sciences (see  Lorenz, 1977), 
including psychology (see, for instance, Greenacre, 1971, p. 370).  
26 See Lakoff and Núñez (2000). 
27 This is the main meaning given by Freud to the number three in Chapter X of his 
work Symbolism in the Dream (Freud, 1915‐17). 
28  This  plays  an  important  role  not only  from  the  larger  philosophical  stance  (see, 
for  instance,  the  theological  notions  of  trinity)  but  also  from  a  mathematical 
standpoint.  Indeed,  many  elementary  formal  entities  are  based  on  ternary 
properties,  like,  for  example,  a  function,  defined  by  a  tern  of  the  type  , 
where    and    are  arbitrary  theoretical  sets  and    is  a  (functional)  law,  or  role, 
which connects the former in the following manner  . See Christopherson and 
Johnstone Jr (1981). For triadic reality and its role in Ego’s development, see Akhtar 
(2009) as well as Rosen (1954). 
Œdipus triangulation which takes place in the phallic phase. Furthermore, according to
Dehaene (1997), the number “three” seems to be the most frequent number, coherently
with the known fact that the word “phallus” (or one of its numerous synonyms) seems to
be the most frequently pronounced term at every age. On the other hand, according to
Weich (1989), although fetishism most often employs concrete objects for the related
defensive purposes involved, there are other instances in which abstract words and speech
can be concretely used in place of, or in addition to, the more familiar material fetish,
discussing as well certain aspects of language’s development that are pertinent just in this
regard. Hence, the language functions are also inherent to the psychosexual phases here
involved. Finally, following studies made by S. Dehaene and quoted in Lakoff and Núñez
(2000), it has been ascertained that the main cerebral area involved in numerical
questions is the lower parietal cortex (one of the most associative) where the association
of many cerebral functions takes place, above all the sensory-motor ones (sight, hearing,
touch, etc.), hence where the formation of corporal image will take place during own
psychosexual development. There, the primary role that visual-spatial abilities play in
mathematical thought is also confirmed (in this regard, see also Kreger Silverman, 2002),
also in relation to gender differences (see Contreras et al., 2007).
Two further report cases and a Freudian case study

Herein (and in the next subsection), we report some significant clinical cases drawn from
psychoanalytic literature, which partially bear out what is suggested in this paper.
Following Dieckmann (1993), it is meaningful to report a clinical case treated by
Dieckmann himself29 concerning an eternal student in mathematics who suffers from a
form of borderline syndrome. This individual refers to having dreamed that Hitler wasn’t
dead and that he had retaken power in Germany. He says that the SS had identified him
as a Jew due to the fact that he had dark hair and a crooked nose. Some days later, an SS
official pulled out a revolver to shoot him in the back of the neck. The consequent strong
anxiety woke him. Furthermore, when he described this dream to Dieckmann, he was still
full of anxiety, insinuating that he (that is, Dieckmann) was that SS official of the dream,
disguised as an analyst, who would have pulled out the revolver to kill him. Clearly, the
patient had transferred to him (i.e. Dieckmann), by projective identification, his heavy
male aggressiveness (which is a possible symptom of his latent homosexuality which, in
turn, is strictly related to the Œdipus complex and to the castration anxiety – see Solomon
and Patch (1971). In doing so, the patient hoped that the analyst would free him, with his
death, from his strong feelings of anxiety. Dieckmann was quite bewildered by that, but
immediately had the strong sensation of being the mother of the patient. With the upper
part of his body, Dieckmann started to do some slow movements like dandle himself,
uttering some calming sounds without speaking. Therefore, through this projective
counteridentification by Dieckmann, the patient became the son of the mother
(Dieckmann), and thanks to this process the patient was reassured, and at the end he was
able to say: it was just a dream! Now, in this regard, it is clear that the dark hair refers to
fetish objects and the crooked nose and the revolver clearly refer to a phallic symbol.
Moreover, it is not by chance that the patient was attracted by mathematics. Finally, to
further validate what we have covered in this paper, we simply quote two important
Freudian works, namely The Schreber Case of 1911, and the 1910 Leonardo da Vinci: A
29 This clinical case is mentioned in the chapter entitled “The formation of symbols 
in the complexual nuclei”. In interpreting this case, Dieckmann himself, at first, made 
use of Freudian theory, then compared it with the Jungian one.  
Memory of His Childhood. In the former, Freud tries to explain the psychosis mechanism
through the paradigmatic instance given by the paranoia, bringing this back to projections
of repressed strong homosexual tendencies toward his own father, which were re-enacted
by his personal doctor. In this essay, for the first time, Freud outlined the possible
mechanisms underlying psychoses, including disavowal. But it is, above all, the second
Freudian study that is of fundamental importance to our purposes. Indeed, there Freud
made a careful analysis of the following childhood memory described by Leonardo da
Vinci. Namely, Leonardo da Vinci wrote the celebrated 1505 codex entitled Treatise on
the Flight of Birds, and during the description of the flight of vultures, he strangely
quoted his childhood memory (see Freud, 1989, p. 143) as follows:
This detailed writing on kites seems to be my destiny, the one that is so deeply
concerned with vultures – for I recall as one of my very earliest memories that while I
was in my cradle, a vulture came down to me, and opened my mouth with its tail, and
struck me many times with its tail against my lip’.
After various possible (some obvious) interpretations, Freud finished by agreeing with
the following one (see Freud, 1989, pp. 152-157, pp. 184-188). First, the curiosity for
birds may easily be brought back to the childhood curiosity of Leonardo for childhood
sexual explorations. Then, the vulture’s tail is, of course, a male genital organ, while the
vulture itself is a mythological symbol of maternity. The repeated tail knockings on his
mouth mean a strong maternal care to Leonardo, so that he was fascinated and seduced
by his mother in childhood. According to Freud, all this firmly engraved on Leonardo
curiosity toward genital setting differences, above all in detecting the lack of a female
penis, which is at the basis of the strong (sublimated) observational curiosity, also
towards nature (mother). The precocious sexual excitation, etched in Leonardo by his
mother, has been sublimated in symbolic elaboration which, in turn, was the result of his
great childhood curiosity arising from gender sexual differences, in primis by the lack of
a female penis (the vulture’s tail). Thus, the early sexual researches by Leonardo had a
decisive role in his creative attitude. Finally, the possible homosexual tendencies of
Leonardo may be explained by the lack of an admonishing paternal figure. On the other
hand, this absence leads to not recognizing the order of law, this being also decisive in
creatively achieving new results beyond the preconstituted order that determines the
borders of the knowledge field of every discipline. All this clearly confirms what is said
in this paper, since Leonardo was one of the greatest artists and scientists of all the times.
A possible reinterpretation of another Freudian case study

As a further case, we also consider, following Vegetti Finzi (1976, pp. 29-32), Freud’s
second chapter, entitled The Child’s Game of Fort-Da, of the well-known 1920 paper
Beyond the Pleasure Principle. In it, observing his one and a half-year-old grandson
Ernst, Freud tries to interpret the cotton reel game by relating this to the absence of the
mother and to fill up the emptiness left by the lost love’s object. Whilst the child must
undergo the turning away of the mother, with such a game he or she may retaliate against
this, becoming an active part of such a relation. It is an essentially verbal game, the words
fort [forth] and da [here] symbolically filling up such an object’s absence, replacing and
representing it in such a way as to develop the symbolic space, hence the culture. In the
cotton reel game, it is possible to identify the three main dimensions of the own lived
experience: the real one (the mother30), the imaginary one (the reel) and the symbolic one
(the word), overlooking the next Lacanian theory. According to Freud, the throwing out
of the object, in such a manner as to disappear, might to be a (symbolic) way to satisfy a
repressed drive, consisting in avenging the mother’s abandonment, taking the meaning of
defiance: namely, the child says, “Fine, begone as well, I do not need you, because I
myself am to go away you!” The child himself, one year later, when he was angry with a
toy, threw it out, roughly exclaiming: “Go to war!” At that time, indeed, it was told to
him that his father was at war. Nevertheless, the child did not feel the father’s absence at
all, showing that he did not want to be disturbed from his own and exclusive possession
of the mother. This is a general way of doing of the children when they desire to express
similar aggressive and hostile impulses, hurling out objects instead of persons. As is well
known, d’après Melanie Klein, play is the best way to analyse a child’s unconscious, and
Freud himself started to agree with this perspective with this 1920 work. However, given
the age of the child herein considered, this discourse is properly inherent to the passage
from the anal to the phallic phase until the Œdipus one, when genitality reaches its apex
to guide the whole human personality.31 To this purpose, we would want to add that the
above Freudian interpretation of the cotton reel game, especially that regarding the last
part involving the father, is perhaps a little too rational (also in consideration of the
child’s age). Instead, we would want to propose a little modification to this last
interpretative part, in accordance with what is done in this paper. To be precise, we wish
instead to suggest that this cotton reel game could be related to the lack of a female penis
instead of the lack of a mother, also on the basis of what Freud says about the second
statement, made around the age of two and a half, by his grandson as regards his own
father (who was at war). Maybe, the child’s feeling of lack might refer just to this lack of
a penis rather than that of a father, given also the simple fact that a reel has a phallic
meaning: to be exact, the reel’s wire (the phallus) that appears and disappears into the
reel (the mother) stands respectively for this penis’s presence and absence (or retirement
into the mother’s body) which, as already said, has strong emotional charges in this
period of life. The throwing of an object has the psychoanalytic meaning of a phallic
erection;32 numerous phenomena of this type take place during the transition from the
anal to the phallic phase, with an apex in the latter. Nevertheless, the psychoanalytic
community has forever been concordant in assuming already existent precocious forms of
castration anxiety in males and penis envy in females from two years old (see Greenacre,
1971) which, however, will change during psychosexual development. As stated above,
around two years old, the first steps and words begin, together the incipient formation of
own bodily image. Moreover, as we will recall in the next subsections, the first
communicative and linguistic functions take place as means and tools to symbolically
explain corporal movements or to expressively imitate other external phenomena
observed by the child. At this stage, the infant’s thought begins to form in concomitance
with the first verbal and preverbal representations in turn based on and supported by
corporal image formation. The child, at this age, is unable to carry out such complete
thought, that is to say, that of the absence of the mother as a real person. Freud himself
30 Or rather, the mother’s phallus, according to our interpretation.  
31  See  Vegetti  Finzi  (1976),  according  to  whom  genitality  represents  the  main 
regulative  leitmotiv  of  psychoanalysis,  due  to  its  role  in  the  formation  and 
structuration of human personality.  
32 See Greenacre (1979, p. 253). 

dealt with this argument in discussing mourning elaboration (afterwards included into the
1924 Kleinian depressive position) in his Mourning and Melancholia (of 1917). On the
other hand, even if it were this, that is to say, if one took into account the above Freudian
interpretation based on the mother absence, this mourning elaboration wouldn’t be related
to the loss of a real person (the mother, in this case) but rather to that of an internal object
generally cathexed by ambivalence (see Rycroft, 1968a), just like the mother phallus.
Even in doing so, we would fall again into the realm of disavowal because this
mechanism is just that invoked by Freud himself (for the first time) as a unique way to
overcome this mourning and related anxiety through a psychic elaboration that
contemplates disavowal as the first step toward this.33 According to E. Kris, then, a
certain castration anxiety is quite intrinsic to the same bodily human structure.
Furthermore, according to Greenacre, the (anal) castration anxiety is operative since two
years old, and, in the anal phase, it is due to a fear of losing too the penis (in males) in
addition to the faeces. In this period, faeces and phallus are located in the same area, and
roughly have the same form, but in the subsequent phallic phase, the penis will assume an
ever more predominant role, while the faeces become something to get rid of. All this
holds as regards Freud’s grandson. Then, the fact that the child showed a certain
intolerance towards his father has to be led back more than anything else to his entrance
into the Œdipus phase with the end of the phallic phase. The cotton reel might then also
have a fetishist meaning if considered as a transitional object in the Winnicott sense.
Finally, the exclamation o-o-o (which, according to Freud, stands for “fort”) could also
stand34 for a vocalization of wohin (or also wo), that is, “where is”, or simply “where”,
the missing penis, whereas the other exclamation a-a-a, as above, might stand for a
vocalization of “da”, that is, “there is” or “is here” the penis. On the other hand,
following Bulle and Rigutini (1902, 1907), in a German dictionary drawn up in the 1890s
by a professional German philologist Oskar Bulle (1857-1917) with the support of his
father-in-law, the Italian philologist Giuseppe Rigutini (1829-1903), the German term
that properly stands for “go away” is wegschicken (as first term) or fortscheiden (as
second term), or also weggehen, which is the adverb “forth” translated into weg as first
term and into fort as second term. Then, the expression “hunt away” is translated as
wegjagen in the first way, and into aus dem Dienst jagen in the second way. Furthermore,
the adverb “there” is also translated into dort, so that the exclamation o-o-o could also
stand for the vocalization of dort, that is to say, the missing female penis “stays there”,
where the reel has been thrown, in such a manner as to be hidden under the bed, while
when he pulls back the reel out of the bed, he merrily says “is here” (da). In short, since
the dictionary of Bulle and Rigutini is of the period in which Freud wrote that paper, it
follows that the adverb fort wasn’t the first term to be frequently and commonly used to
mean “go away” which, in German, had a more complex terminology. Hence, it is also
likewise presumable that the exclamation o-o-o stood for fort or wo or else wohin, in
reference to the possible localization of a missing object, the female penis in this case.
What Freud himself says about the emotional tone with which the child expressed such
exclamations leads us to be inclined towards this alternative interpretation of this game of
appearing/disappearing. In fact, his grandson was much more joyful when the reel
(female penis) reappeared rather than when it disappeared (missing penis), the former
event being less distressing than the latter (anxiogenous). It would therefore be the
castration anxiety at the basis of another possible interpretation of this game reported by
Freud in his 1920 paper which, amongst others, also wanted to explain a possible origin
33 See also Galimberti (2006). 
34 Which, in any case, is easier to pronounce by a child than “fort”. 

of symbolic function, hence of culture. If one instead considers our interpretation, then
this Freudian work would result in being another confirmation of what is herein
suggested about the possible origins of symbolic function. All this, on the other hand,
would turn out to be more coherent with the fact that the Lacanian theory of the
psychoanalytic field (which, inter alia, is known to have its deep roots in the two
cornerstones of human psychic development, namely penis envy for females and
castration anxiety for males (see Dell’Io, 1994) – starts from the Ego’s splitting based on
disavowal, as briefly recalled above. On the other hand, Lacan stressed the symbolic
meaning and its possible relationships with language, the absence and presence
phenomena described in this Freudian paper; the absence-presence pair provides the first
opposition to introduce the symbolic order. Lacan himself, in one of his celebrated
seminaries, alludes to the possible relations between Winnicott’s transitional object and
this reel.
From fetishism to mathematics and physics

Now, according to what has been said in a previous section, between two and three years
old the phallic phase takes place, in which, as we have seen, the castration complex
prevails with related phenomena, in concomitance with the Œdipus complex. As we have
seen, in this phase the disavowal mechanism (which starts, in its incipient form, in the
preceding anal phase) acts with its consequences, so that the above-mentioned psychic
phenomena related to counting and to the evanescence of number three might be
correlated with it, or brought back to it, given the Freudian (phallic) psychoanalytic
meaning of number three. So, we would want to focus attention just on these last
remarks: that is to say, we wish to identify the formation of human symbolic function in
concomitance with this Freudian psychosexual evolution phase (namely, the phallic one,
but with a view too to the previous anal phase) by means of the disavowal mechanism
intended as a fundamental psychic formation mechanism which acts in every human
being, but which might have degenerative variants (for instance, toward psychotic
disorders or paraphilias). In our view, this basic Freudian mechanism (initially considered
as a simple Ego defence mechanism but later hypothesized to be also a normal psychic
formation mechanism35 by Freud himself in his last 1938 work) has been quite neglected
after Freud, except for some notable exceptions. Furthermore, from what has been said so
far, it will be possible to put forward the hypothesis that symbolic thought (including the
abstract one) is formed according to this mechanism during this psychic phase (the
phallic one). In such a manner, it would also be possible to give some explanation as to
what the famous physicist and mathematician Eugene Paul Wigner affirmed (Wigner,
1960) upon the close relationships between mathematics and physics, speaking of an
“unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences” about the efficacy of
mathematics to symbolically explain the external phenomenic reality; indeed, according
to what has been said in this paper, this could be explained simply by the fact that the
35  It  will  play,  amongst  others,  a  very  basic  role  in  the  later  pioneering  works  of 
Melanie Klein and Jacques Lacan. It will be necessary therefore to go on beyond this 
paper  with  another  one  which  should  take  into  account  the  Lacan  perspective 
according to which, to access to symbolic order (hence, the linguistic one), a primary 
role is just played by disavowal, as already envisaged by Freud himself in his 1925 
seminal  paper The  Negation,  a  work which nowadays is known  to have to do with 
the  disavowal  mechanism  rather  than  the  negation  one  (see  Chemama  & 
Vandermersch, 1998). 
human being starts to symbolically represent a really perceived object (the phallus, which
is missing in the female) in a fetishistic manner, by means of a precise psychic
mechanism (the Freudian disavowal) that takes place, as already stated, during a well-
defined phase (the phallic one) of her or his psychic evolution. Indeed, as stated above,
this fetish formation has a strict correlation with symbolic function, putting the human
being into a close (symbolic) relationship with the external reality, at least in those cases
in which it does not degenerate. On the other hand, following Carnap (1966), the very
basic principle which lies at the foundation of every measurement process – hence, of the
experimental scientific method (which, roughly speaking, combines mathematical
analysis and experimentation36) – is the comparison one: if there exists an arbitrary
comparison method, then a (related) measurement principle is always possible through
the subsequent assignment of quantitative rules whose results are numbers (measures).
And, what deeper psychodynamic mechanism of comparison can there be if not the
identification of gender sexual differences by the child, hence of the lack of a female
penis? Furthermore, as we have seen above, there is a close connection between numbers
and their Freudian psychoanalytic meaning contextualized within the psychosexual
stadial development of the human being which should also explain the natural human
tendency to assign numbers to natural phenomena. On the other hand, following
D’Amore (2009), whenever we try to evoke a mathematical object, like a line, we must
necessarily represent it through a semiotic register, that is to say, geometrically with a
sketch, or algebraically with an equation ( ), or denoting it with the index
finger (clearly, a phallic symbol), or evoking it with written or spoken words. All these
representations are not the line (as a mathematical object) but its evocations, its semiotic
pictures, its images. The mathematical line, in its own simplest realistic meaning, does
not exist. Algebra is the highest expression of a decathected process while geometry deals
with spatial relationships in their most attenuated form but still in a guise which is
capable of visual representation (see Rosen, 1954).
On conceptual metaphors
What has been said in this paper about the primary role played by bodily image formation
may be also laid out into the general cognitive context of embodied knowledge which, as
said above, seems to find experimental confirmation by neuroscience studies on mirror
neurons. Within this context the important work of George Lakoff and Rafael E. Núñez
on embodied mathematics is therefore laid out. Their celebrated work (Lakoff & Núñez,
2000) is based above all on the general linguistic notion of conceptual metaphor
according to which, roughly speaking, abstract human ideas make use of cognitive
mechanisms to bring back to sensory-motor experiences; that is to say, the abstract is
understood through the concrete. This viewpoint has already been philosophically
proposed (see Cuccio, 2012), while a more scientific perspective to this idea will be given
by the Greenacre researches. As the authors themselves recall, most of our thoughts and
conceptual systems are sources from the cognitive unconscious, which is a construct
wider than the psychoanalytic one; indeed, it comprises not only the repressed content
but, in general, every sort of non-conscious thought, just to use a simple negation.
According to Lakoff and Núñez, perhaps the main and most surprising result achieved by
cognitive science is that most of our thoughts are unconscious. And mathematics does not
make an exception. All our own ideas start from our corporal experiences, including the
mathematical ones. Nevertheless, these authors point out that a deep explanation of the
36 See Segrè (1964, p. 1). 

implicit origins of these ideas is missing. For them, conceptual metaphors are mostly part
of the cognitive unconscious. They say that these mainly originate from our childhood
experience, invoking a sort of fusion of embodied experiences as sources of them. Such a
process is analogous with the formation of corporal image during childhood as we will
see later, above all with the notable work of Phyllis Greenacre who conducted
fundamental studies on the possible relationships between creativity and perversions. In
such a fusion, contemporaneous (or synchronic) active involvement takes place, with
emotive attendance, of different parts of the body. But mathematical creativity has
nothing to do with elementary arithmetic, but rather with abstraction, which is mainly
symbolic in its deep nature. In this regard, the psychoanalytic perspective might
accomplish this, as we have tried to do with this paper. Indeed, the disavowal mechanism
is basically centred on a corporal insight whose outcomes will then be unconsciously
elaborated with repercussions on the Ego structure, hence on cognitive tasks. Therefore,
what is here proposed might answer this demand for clarification of these implicit
questions that Lakoff and Núñez (whose viewpoint is that of the cognitive science of
mathematics) claim. They state that there is an unavoidable unconscious conceptual
system underlying the whole mathematical framework. In this regard, the psychoanalytic
paradigm may lend a valid model to explain the primary sources of conceptual
metaphors. Lakoff and Núñez again make proposal about why mathematical knowledge
has not been extended to the unconscious realm.37 This is not completely true: indeed, the
important work of Ignacio Matte Blanco tried to successfully move in this direction, as
we have briefly outlined in Iurato (2013). It seems that there is a certain reluctance to use
the psychoanalytic pattern where it is needed. We instead assume a certain democratic
epistemological viewpoint in the general context of psychological sciences. Indeed,
extending an epistemological principle due to the physicist Richard P. Feynman,38 it is
possible to consider each of the various psychological trends as a model describing a part
or aspect of the complex psychic reality. Only all together will they give a more unitary
and complete view of this entity which is shown to have a multiple and varied nature.39
So, the psychoanalytic paradigm might shed light upon those unconscious aspects that are
not very clear to the cognitive sciences, without demanding full authority. From the point
of view outlined in this paper, we have tried to descry a possible origin of symbolic
function by action of the disavowal mechanism. This might turn out to be useful to
explain many not properly cognitive aspects of mathematical thought, for instance, to
(epistemological) integrate the Lakoff and Núñez perspective on the cognitive science of
37 Even if they do not quote Freud at all or, in general, psychoanalysis, in their work.  
38  According  to  Feynman  (1965)  (see  also  Baženov,  1977),  in  physics  there  exist 
many  models  which  can  equivalently  describe  the  same  physical  entity  but  from 
different  viewpoints.  He  takes  into  consideration  the  Babylonian  perspective  on 
physics according to which there exist various different theories, including many to 
reciprocal  relationship,  but  there  does  not  exist  a  unique  axiomatic  system  within 
which they are laid out. So, Feynman speaks of a principle of multiplicity and variety 
of  equivalent  descriptions,  briefly  known  as  Feynman’s  epistemological  principle, 
which  might  be  extended,  in  some  respects,  to  the  case  of  the  variety  of 
psychological theories.  
39  A  similar  perspective  is  provided  by  Carotenuto  (1982)  in  the  case  of  the  many 
psychoanalytic paradigms, but that may be easily extended to the general setting of 
the  various  psychological  trends  as  confirmed  by  Caramelli  (1984,  1985). 
Nevertheless, K. Bühler  had already  hoped for a unitary view of  psychic processes 
that overcame the divergences of the various psychological schools.  
mathematics. On the other hand, following Hopkins (2000), there are close relationships
between psychoanalysis and the source-target domain structure of a conceptual metaphor
as understood by Lakoff and co-workers, again underlying the central role played by
corporal image. Following Hopkins (2000, p. 4):
Where the source domain is A and the target B, so that in mapping the domains we
think of B in terms of A, we can speak of B as metaphor of A. Thus we seem to make
use of a metaphor of a relationship as a journey. In this we use concepts of objects,
properties, and relations from the domain of travel or journeys in order to
conceptualize objects, properties, and relations in the domain of co-operative personal
relationships, such as love. In doing this we systematically take persons in such
relations to correspond to travellers, their particular relationship to the vehicle in
which they are travelling, and their goals in the relationship to their destinations in
travelling. Thus we may speak of such a relationship as going along well, slowing
down, going nowhere, getting stuck, at a crossroads, at a dead end, and so on.
The reference to the triadic structure40 by such a metaphor notion as well as to its
essential meaning to replace or represent an absent object (the female penis in the source
domain) with another symbol (in the target domain) is clear. Nevertheless, Hopkins does
not make the allusion to the disavowal mechanism and related phenomena either explicit
or implicit, even if many interesting points discussed by him might be laid out in this
explanatory framework considered in this paper.
On transitional objects and fetishism: I

In Greenacre (1971), the author argues about an important study conducted by her on the
nature of inspiration in relation to the phallic phase. At the end of this phase, the child
should be able to distinguish herself or himself from the external world. The faeces
assume the role of objects which are no longer so strictly correlated to own body but
belong to the external world and have the double quality of being good or nasty. In this
sense, we are much nearer to the Winnicott notion of transitional object as well as to the
notions of good and bad object of Melanie Klein. Thanks to her or his conquered
standing position as well as to the sensory-motor refinement, the child is able to
distinguish between substance and appearance (or form). The obscurity arouses
contrasting sentiments, fascinating or scaring. The faeces have the meaning both of birth
40  Which  also  seems  to  recall  the  triadic  structural  model  (with  its  communication 
functions) provided by K. Bühler which will exert a great influence on the final work 
of R. Jakobson that in turn will play a basic role in Lacan’s work. 
(from the anus) and death. According to Greenacre, in this period, that is around four
years old, it seems that there is a correspondence between the first forms of
consciousness, good or bad hygienic behaviour and the awareness that dreams are just
that and not real events that occurred during the night. The control and usage of
physiological needs in this period are closely connected with the internalization and
comparison of external inputs with imagination and conscious thought. These control
functions are mainly located in the genital area which is highly sensitive to external
stimuli. Thereafter, castration anxiety (anal castration) starts to appear, even if it is
qualitatively different from the one present in the Œdipal phase (phallic castration). The
related modalities of explication are different for males and females. In Greenacre (1971),
the author discusses fetish and transitional object from a comparative stance. There exist
many common points between fetish and transitional object, the latter practically
ubiquitous and not necessarily entailing a degeneration. The latter is usually abandoned
after infancy but may be extended to accomplish fetishist functions. The transitional
object, as meant by Winnicott, is usually the first object recognized as belonging to the
not-Me (or not-I; see above point a) of previous section) but not in a full manner. It is
created around one year old from the symbiotic mother-child pair, when verbal capacities
are uncertain. Greenacre alludes to a basic role played by the choice and formation of this
transitional object in creativity. The fetish is above all a bisexual symbol that allows
sexual differences to be refused and affirmed. The fetish is almost never spontaneously
abandoned because it is the only one thanks to which a sexual satisfaction is possible.
Following Greenacre (1971), by comparing the Winnicott notion of transitional object
with that of fetish, it is possible to identify some main common aspects. First, there is a
kind of symbolic magic in both. In particular, the symbolic nature of a transitional object
is quite primitive, through which the infant starts to cast bridges with the external world
even if it initially has a multiform, nebulous, evanescent and changeable nature (like the
symbol, as recalled in Part 1) but inspires a sense of confidence and assurance to the
possible frustrations and anxieties due to a still weak sense of reality. It is the first object
created by the child with the help of the mother, which will assume a meaning assigned to
it by the child herself or himself. Through its institution, he or she will be able to
establish further object relations. It is ubiquitous, although the period of its usage is
variable. Nevertheless, the initial emotional charge cathexed into the transitional object
gradually vanishes (often towards games), whereas that of fetish is persistent and
continuous also in adult age, without doubts about its nature and existence. In the latter,
which should represent the mother phallus, material elements and magic essences (mainly
due to enchantments and self-hypnotic procedures) are intimately mixed, in a persistent
manner. Second, the relationships with aggressiveness are quite different in both cases.
The transitional object rather has supportive, intimate and fond relationships with the
mother (from which it arises, as the fetish), not marked by an aggressiveness so intense as
to become hostile as in fetishism, which has a coagulated anger sprung out of the fear of
castration, mainly due to primal scene traumas. The transitional object undergoes a
gradual separation from the mother with a certain amount of aggressiveness, but
incomparable with the one that fetish has. It is the cross point between the non-hostile
aggressiveness of growth and the object of love. The transitional object usually arises
when a good enough mother is present, otherwise hostile aggressiveness or frustrations
will be the predominant features. The fetish has its source from the mother’s body, from
her genital zone to be precise, hence is characterized by an aggressiveness turned toward
an own narcissistic satisfaction and not as a means of love like the transitional object. It
takes place in its material and noticeable form through a latency phase to adolescence.
Sadomasochistic fantasies and practices are common features of fetishists. The

transitional object has a fundamental role in building up the own individuality and sense
of reality, and may diversify if necessary to the various next purposes. Instead, the fetish
is a surrogate of the genital zone of the corporal image. It has a narrow action area and is
never used for other purposes if not for a sexual one.
On transitional objects and fetishism: II

We now discuss the role played by fetish and transitional object in imaginative function,
following the careful analysis made by Greenacre (1971). Taking into account what was
said in the previous section, the overlapping between transitional object and fetish
phenomenologies are non-void, in which their common aspects fall. From this, just when
the transitional object gradually starts to vanish, the fetish formation begins almost like a
continuation of the former, at least in degeneration cases. According to M. Sperling,
Winnicott’s transitional object is considered as a kind of infantile fetish, further pointing
out the comparison between these entities. At this point, in relation to the non-empty area
given by common aspects between fetish (infantile fetish) and transitional object, we
might rightly call transitional-fetishist objects the entities falling in this area. Now, we
debate on the close relationships existing between transitional-fetishist objects and
symbolism, imagination and creativity, also taking into account the fact that during the
period of formation of these objects, that is to say from two to four years old, the first
language properties start to form. According to Greenacre, the capacity to develop
illusion and imagination is the main useful (but also potentially dangerous) feature of a
transitional object. In general, the formation of illusion is a general and natural
phenomenon that exists throughout life, which may be defined as the consequences of a
wrong interpretation of one or more stimuli. When we have a sensorial stimulation, the
consequent perception of related data is normally performed. Nevertheless, this sensorial
experience is apperceived by the observer according to the emotional state of that
moment. The various changes that take place are possible only thanks to rapidity of free
associations. In adult age, the illusions are often created in those situations in which there
is some obstacle to the usual and normal clearness of sensorial consciousness or
apperception, also due to inhibiting or hindering external conditions. Then, the collective
situations increase such perturbations and deviations which favour the illusion, above all
when a common ideology exists that makes the possible choices biased. In this case, the
doubtful or dissenting individual may have a general Weltanschauung that is much more
exact or valid than the collective one. In these general terms, it is clear that the child is
more inclined to create illusions. The only available means of acquisition for children are
those provided by sensorial experiences which are mainly promoted, developed and
managed by the mother from pregnancy, where a considerable role is played by the
introjection-projection mechanisms of primary identification which are already very
active during the prenatal phase (see Sasso, 2007). The ability to distinguish between Me
and not-Me, the animate and the inanimate, the mobile and the immobile, and so on, is
quite uncertain in the child. The ability to determine and to distinguish between the form
and contour of external objects develops with the increasing awareness of the own body
acquired thanks to sensations due to endogenous experiences as well as to explorations of
the own body. In this precocious period the transitional object appears as a means of
comparison between already acquired knowledge and further experimentations, hence as
a first object for establishing subsequent non-aggressive and sympathetic object relations
in the wake of the previous relationships with the mother and her body of which the
transitional object will be the natural continuation beyond the restricted bodily confines
towards the wider external world. Gradually, the transitional object will be replaced by a
toy or various other objects, parallel to the development of imaginative skills, in non-
degenerative cases, while in cases in which aggressiveness tendencies prevail it gradually
becomes an infantile fetish which will further evolve towards an adult fetish in
degenerative cases. Therefore, the emotional components of aggressiveness involved in
this period will play a crucial role in choosing one way or the other. The possible shift
from a transitional object to an infantile fetish is shown by a clinical case reported in
Roiphe and Galenson (1975) where a separation experience was able to lead to a serious
pre-Œdipal castration reaction, by which the transitional object was no longer capable of
serving its ordinary function and was replaced by a fetishistic object (infantile fetish).
Fetishism and bodily image: I

Thanks to its great plasticity,41 the transitional object will allow further multidimensional
connections to be instituted through associations with many other external objects which
may be represented by means of a spontaneous playful activity. This activity, which was
initially free, spontaneous and casual, gradually becomes constrictive and more organized
under the internal pressure of maturational tendencies to give a sense of reality and
security in the wake of the good mother aspects, if there are any. The transitional object is
the first creative object made by the child, an indispensable help for her or his psychic
growth. With her or his own imagination and creativity, the child gives a form to this
object, instituting with it various possible relations with other objects of her or his
imagination or of the external world. The transitional object is moulded on her or his
previous (if any) relationships with the good mother of whom it will constitute her
symbolic representative. Instead, it will degenerate into an infantile fetish when the bad
mother has instituted a perturbative relation with her child, giving rise to a damaged
corporal image which he or she tries to remediate by means of narcissistic satisfactions in
the latency phase or puberty, during which the adult fetish starts to form in concomitance
with strong castration fears. Starting from these notable Winnicott ideas, in particular
considering the transitional object as the first object created by the child, Greenacre was
naturally led to consider the obvious links existing between the transitional object
formation and creative as well as imaginative abilities. According to the official
biographies of the most important scientists in history, there are numerous cases (see, for
example, Isaac Newton) in which childish play has played an important role in
developing their creative and imaginative abilities. According to Greenacre, illusion is a
fundamental human capacity which can be improved by means of the correction of wrong
perceptions with the own lived experience that gradually every human being acquires
through her or his comparison with the external world. To this end, the transitional object
plays a fundamental role in the conformation of the perception with reality, trying to
avoid the delirium (or hallucinations) which may arise in the case of inadequacy of the
related involved emotional control. In some respects, the relationship between (correct or
real) illusion and delirium might be roughly compared to the relationship between
transitional object and fetish. However, this situation is rather more complex in early
infancy in which a primary role is played by the set of perceptive experiences undergone
by the child during her or his development, which take place from the first one-year-old
abilities to distinguish the Self from the Other. Nevertheless, in childhood, the child has a
sensitivity that is so high that he may perform discriminations between objects that the
adult may consider to be equal, this being due to a different higher perception of Gestalt
41 In what follows, we refer to Greenacre (1971), which includes the contents of the 
basic Greenacre papers (1953, 1955, 1957). 
by a child than by an adult. In childhood, the perception field of a child is so susceptible
and highly reactive thanks to the concomitant development of her or his bodily
kinaesthetic formation and sensorial-somatic experience enrichment,42 whose outcomes
will contribute to the parallel carrying out of the phenomenology of introjective-
projective relationships with the external world. The repetitive comparison between the
outcomes of the former processes with the external objects will form the central core of
the own stabilized knowledge through which it will be possible to recognize the various
objects already examined. All that will only be possible for the child if the mother is
present as support to this protective activity and explorative knowledge. A prominent role
will also be played by all the various emotive reactions with which she will assist such a
primary child development. Although the maternal figure might be replaced by other so-
called carers (even if not in a perfectly equivalent manner), the basic introjective-
projective mechanism system between the Self and the Other will never be abandoned
throughout life.43 It will play a basic role in emphatic and emotional growth. Thereafter,
the various sensory-motor outputs coming from all the sensitive organs will be
organized44 to give rise to symbolic vocal forms of language, which are one of the main
creative features of human beings. Greenacre then supposes that the extreme complexity
of perceptivity due to the multiple combinatorial characteristics of the set of the first two-
year-old elementary sensory-motor stimuli lie at the source of as many multiple illusions
which have the main function to stabilize the evaluation of the object of the various
object relationships. At the same time, this infinite possibility of different combinations
of the perceptive elements, in turn, allows shades, shadows and ambiguities which are the
source of symbolic function, which is a considerable component of originality. The
creative person is able to play with analogies and resemblances which, suitably
(unconsciously) managed, may lead to a new, useful and harmonious combination which
might give rise to her or his original contribution. According to Greenacre, illusion plays
a very fundamental role in creativity because it may furnish the stimulus for a further
primitive invention. Creativity is a prominent ability in those individuals who show they
have a very great and unusual sensitivity for every sensorial-kinaesthetic stimulation that,
42 The gastrointestinal system and the genital zones are the main (but not unique) 
bodily areas involved in such a childish sensorial consciousness of the first two 
years of life.  
43  The  maternal  cares  (only  of  a  good  mother)  are  of  fundamental  importance  in 
developing  and  in  bringing  about  the  somatic experience  field.  In  this  regard,  it  is 
enough  to  recall  that  Freud,  in  the  1910  Leonardo  da  Vinci:  A  Memory  of  His 
Childhood, was able to recognize a great somatic relation between Leonardo da Vinci 
and  his  mother:  indeed,  Freud  told  of  many  childish  experiences  of  Leonardo  in 
which his mother numerous times covered him with many kisses, so increasing and 
enriching his somatic perception with these very close maternal touches (see Freud, 
1989). As we know, then, the deep somatic and sensitive exchanges are of primary 
importance  for  the  child  (see  Greenacre,  1971).  They  originate  from  the  initial 
mother‐child  symbiotic  relation,  to  which  the  child  will  respond  with  a  suitable 
reflecting  reaction  (see  Greenacre,  1971)  after  having  almost  subliminally  (Stern’s 
transubstantiation)  absorbed  the  mother  stimuli.  In  this  regard,  see  the  basic 
studies of Daniel N. Stern (1985), in which the primary role played by the mother in 
the  first  two  years  of  the  child’s  life  is  further  highlighted.  Stern  speaks  of  a 
transubstantiation  which  takes  place  between  child  and  mother  during  this  initial 
symbiotic phase (see also Piscicelli, 1994). 
44 According to almost universal structures and roles. 

together with the correspondent introjective-projective reactivity, leads to a clearer
consciousness of Gestalt. Just these last introjective-projective reactions, above all in the
periods in which the capacity of autonomous movements increases, may contribute to the
illusory animation of inanimate objects as well as to the deanimation of parts of the own
corporal image. According to Greenacre, this stage of perception of the external world in
terms of the own body may be considered as a precursor of the next ability to transform
games and other objects in a projective extension of parts of the own body. In this, the
author invokes the analogy with the prolonged use of the transitional object by the child
which nevertheless may degenerate into infantile fetish in cases of insufficient good
mother behaviours, thereby transforming the potentially creative illusions into possible
deliria. In any case, the transitional object, whatever function it has, is a tangible symbol
of a relation which is undergoing a change (whence its name) toward different possible
alternatives. Amongst the normal ones (and not degenerating into fetishism), there is the
one in which this object will be abandoned as an obsolescent and without any more sense
thing; or the one in which it will be creatively converted into a material toy or into a
coherent and realizable fantasy, thus developing the higher forms of creative imagination.
These last changes may take place only when the own Ego’s development has reached a
point of self-awareness, that is to say, the child is conscious about having and controlling
a form of thought which belongs to her or him. This favourable change is allowed only
when the aggressive drives are managed by herself or himself on the basis of what is
made by her or his good or bad mother in developing the proper corporal image;
otherwise, the fetishistic drifts are unavoidable, as surrogates to these latter deficiencies.
As stated above on perversions, Khan Masud agrees with what is said in this subsection
and the next.
Fetishism and bodily image: II

In Greenacre (1971), an interesting discussion on a 1969 work by E. Galenson about
possible sources of symbolic thought and its influences on sublimation processes is
conducted (see also Gay, 1992). Galenson discusses on the verbal, non-verbal processes
and their relationships as well as their possible role in creative thought. She stresses
verbalized and non-verbalized games and their role in creativity. In this regard, a careful
analysis of language function was needed. Play comprises movement, imitation and
action and generally it is a spontaneous expression of pleasure and spontaneity.
According to K. Groos, play will anticipate the subsequent kinds of adult activity. Play
has been a fundamental analysis and research tool upon which the work of Melanie Klein,
in psychoanalysis, and of Maria Montessori,45 in pedagogy, has been successfully built
up. The various toys and objects involved in play basically have the meaning and the
function of prolongation of body parts. They are the result of a kind of cathexis of a
surplus of bodily energy whose excess needs to be released during bodily growth, while
also taking into account environmental opportunities. The modalities of these energetic
investments are multiples, and the plasticity with which they will be satisfied are at the
sources of secondary thought processes. It seems that thought is the ability to retain and
45 This is well known as the appreciated Montessori method is, amongst other things, 
based on a full development of all the sensor‐perceptive abilities of a child as well as 
on  the  coherent  and  harmonic  integration of their  outcomes. On the  other  hand,  a 
further confirmation of the primary importance of play in the symbolic formation in 
concomitance with the primary and fundamental relation mother‐child is due to M. 
Milner (1955). 
to use interior images sprung out from sensory-motor and somatic experiences which are
acquired with modalities very similar to those of play, although experimented in different
conditions and opportunities. This retention, then, is closely related to the sense of time,
which is a valuable support to the forms of representation given to these images. During
this period, between the end of the first year and the beginning of the second,
communication abilities and language functions begin to develop coherently and parallel
to the main formation processes of corporal image, as stated above. The first linguistic
phenomena are mainly imitative, like exclamations and preverbal vocalizations to
symbolically denote corporal movements. The fact is that language also starts during the
period of sphincter development and it is clinically known as well that child language
may be greatly influenced by the control of sphincters. Therefore, according to
Greenacre, there is a great plasticity in the bodily organization which is the basis for the
image of Self, characterized by synchronic or parallel developments of various and
different parts of the body which therefore will turn out to influence each other by means
of simple energetic displacements. In short, Greenacre thinks that there exists a sort of
somatic background for symbolism. Furthermore, starting from the above-mentioned
discussion on sphincter development, Greenacre points out that the phallic phase plays a
fundamental role in the further establishment of object relationships. Finally, Greenacre
comes back again to creativity compared with secondary process thought and play.
Greenacre points out that certain creative predispositions are innate.46 Out of these, there
is a great running of sensory-motor apparatus which will contribute to a better formation
both of the perception field and of the set of possible responses to external stimuli. All
this will then be developed and assisted by the symbiotic child-mother relation. The
mother at first will constitute the primary object of the child’s interests, around whom
subsequently other peripheral objects might represent or summarize her body or parts of
it, which she will promote in dependence on the degree to which she is a good mother.
Greenacre calls these collective alternatives or substitutes, and these are variously
invested by libidinal energy as well as non-hostile aggressive manifestations. Besides
being crucial points in the perceptive consciousness field, these substitutes will form the
seeds of the subsequent affective relations with the external world of which the mother
body is an unavoidable intermediary. These objects will be the first steps through which
relationships are interwoven with the external world, toward an increasing own autonomy
and independence from the mother. They are also the necessary precursors of play as well
as of other creative interests. In conclusion, in the predisposed child, the appearance of
multiple symbolic functions is based on the institution of these collective alternatives
which are mainly the result of external preverbal or partially verbal impressions entrusted
to replace the primary intimate contacts with the mother.
On algebraic symbolism and other

This paper has sprung out of a discussion, exclusively performed within the cognitive
psychology context, enjoined with Professor Antonella D’Amico, a valid cognitive
psychologist from the Department of Psychology of the University of Palermo, about
some gender differences in certain mathematical attitudes observed in children and
adolescents.47 To be precise, Lipari and D’Amico (2009) observed major abstraction
46  And,  following  Sasso  (2007),  we  would  want  to  bring  them  back  to  the 
introjective‐projective process system formation of the prenatal phase. 
47  For  a  general  review  on  gender  differences  in  creativity,  see  the  recent  essay 
article by Hill and Rogers (2012). 
ability in boys compared to girls, above all as regards algebraic attitudes in which, as is
well known, the symbolic function plays a very crucial role.48 Clearly, from their point of
view (that is to say, the cognitive science one), these authors have not given any possible
psychoanalytic motivation to this detected fact. The outcomes of Lipari and D’Amico
(2009) are also confirmed, again within the cognitive viewpoint, by Real Ortega and
Ursini (2010), who detected, however, a certain general difficulty in symbolizing and
interpreting algebraic variables, even if males are favoured compared to females. Their
following conclusions will be easily laid out into a framework based on the disavowal
mechanism. To be precise, their conclusions reported the following:
All the students had more difficulties with the variable as a general number and with
related variables than with the variable as a specific unknown. In particular, they had
difficulties with the symbolization and interpretation of these two uses of variable. We
found gender differences between male and female students in 31 of 33 questions.
Males obtained higher scores than females, but these differences were significant only
for 12 items. The percentage of unanswered problems was higher for females than
males. Significant differences favouring boys were found in the interpretation of a
variable as a general number and as a specific unknown, when interpretation,
manipulation and symbolization of a variable as a general number were required.
Considering the interpretation of a variable in a functional relationship, focusing on
the variation of variables and on the range of variation, girls had more difficulties than
boys in flexibly moving between different uses of variables. This finding allows us to
establish that gender differences exist when students work with two or three uses of
variables in the solution procedure. The differences were related to the interpretation
of a variable in these three different uses and aspects. Clearly, the gender differences
were more significant in those exercises in which students need to shift between
different uses of variables as facets of the same mathematical object and when they are
required to integrate these different uses. Male and female students tended to interpret
48 This,  however,  does  not  imply  any  notable  difference  in  logical  reasoning, 
which seems to be equal in both sexes.  
the variable incorrectly. Frequently, they interpreted the variable as an unknown when
the interpretation of the variable as a general number was required. For tautological
expressions, female students interpreted the variable as unknown. The incorrect
interpretation of the variable in a specific mathematical context may lead to errors
such as the concatenation of algebraic terms. Students, in general, had difficulties in
accepting a negative number or fraction as a valid solution to an algebraic equation.
[…] Our findings have shown that these are gender differences when working with
variables. More research is needed in this direction, nationally and internationally (pp.
196-197).
All the above-mentioned authors, then, adduce mainly some social-cultural motivations
for trying to explain these differences. In contrast, with this paper, we would like to
suggest a first possible psychodynamic explanation for this fact. Indeed, it is clear that the
disavowal mechanism has certain substantial different implications in respect of gender
differences, due to their intrinsic nature as has been defined and considered above all by
Freud but also by post-Freudian authors. Boys have a greater propensity to a symbolic
and abstract function than girls because of the different approach with which they
emotively experience this female lack of a penis. Hereupon, the action of this general
psychic mechanism as well as its outcomes will take place with different modalities. On
the other hand, it is now known that many mathematical attitudes get their primary
sources mainly from visual-spatial abilities49 as well as from bodily sensations
49 Which phylogenetically may be explained by the major male curiosity in looking 
at  and  finding  the  female  genital  organs  which  were  occulted  to  his  vision  by  the 
conquered  standing  position  of  the  genus  Homo  (see  Piscicelli,  1994).  Then,  as 
further confirmation of what is said in this paper, according to Hadamard (1996), it 
seems  that  mathematical  thought  has  its  deep  roots  mainly  in  visual‐spatial 
properties  and  abilities,  while  its  creativity  force  substantially  comes  from  the 
unconscious. According to this eminent author, then, linguistic and verbal properties 
play  a  minor  role  in  the  mathematical  creativity  field,  while  he  assigns  a 
predominant role to visual and imaginative abilities. On the other hand, the history 
of  mathematics  comprises  celebrated  cases  of  important  mathematical  discoveries 
or  inventions  coming  from  insights  in  turn  stimulated  or  motivated  by  real 
situations or images: for instance, H. Lebesgue, in working out his famous theory on 
integration, had an important insight during the building of a brick wall (see Hoare 
&  Lord,  2002).  Likewise,  J.  Leray,  in  brooding  upon  a  mathematical  question  on 
turbulence,  had  a  sudden  insight  by  observing  the  eddies  of  the  Seine  (see  Ruelle 
(1991).  Therefore,  an  imaginative  or  visual  or  geometrical  mind  is  a  basic 
requirement  also  in  mathematical  intuition.  Following  Rosen  (1954),  Hadamard 
himself  refers  to  his  own  subjective  observations.  In  repeating  the  proof  of  the 
classic  proposition  that  the  sequel  of  prime  numbers  is  unlimited,  he  says  that  “a 
(embodiment50). However, the primary aim of this paper has been above all to try to
explain a possible origin of human symbolic function from a psychodynamic stance, by
means of the last Freudian thought of Freud (1938), starting from a case study drawn
from mathematics. Nevertheless, this simple line of research deserves further attention,
for instance by orienting the attention towards a general study of symbolic function,
which has started with this paper to move toward other knowledge fields, including the
linguistic one, where such a function also plays a fundamental role besides the
mathematical one, as briefly recalled in Part 1. Furthermore, it would be of a certain
interest to deeply study the metonymic and metaphoric properties of the fetish which
were briefly recalled in Part 1, as well as to compare what is proposed here with the
emergence of human linguistic functions which take place during the passage from the
anal to the phallic phase. Indeed, on the basis also of the many sources consulted, we are
strongly inclined to think that the characteristic relationships between the semantic and
syntactic features of the fetish are, in a certain sense, homologous to those related to
physics and its formal language, that is to say, between its semantic and syntactic aspects.
In other words, the formation of bodily image, as described above, is of fundamental
importance in establishing the possible and right relationships (syntax) between its
group  of  vague  unstructured  spots  of  different  cluster  qualities  stand  out  at  each 
decisive  stage  of  the  proof  before  the  stage  (itself)  comes  clearly  to  mind”.  Also, 
concerning the problem of considering a sum of infinite numbers of terms intending 
to evaluate its order of magnitude, he states that “when I think of that question, I see 
not the formula itself, but the space it would take if written; a kind of ribbon which 
is thicker or darker at the place corresponding to the possible important terms … or 
as  I  should  see  it,  being  strongly  far‐sighted,  if  I  had  no  glasses  on”.  Could  it  be 
perhaps  that  this  ribbon  stands  for,  or  is  in  place  of,  the  missing  female  penis? 
Hadamard  also  confides  that  he  makes  many  errors  in  writing.  Hadamard  himself 
then  quotes  H.J.  Poincaré’s  œuvre  as  confirmation  of  what  has  been  said,  which, 
amongst  other  things,  is  mainly  centred  on  visual  representations.  In  any  case,  all 
the  Poincaré  philosophical  thought  is  a  confirmation  of  what  here  has  been 
discussed  about  symbolization  and  creativity.  Also,  psychological  anthropology 
confirms a certain influence of visual perception on culture (see Bourguignon, 1979; 
and  references  therein).  Finally,  the  latest  neuroscience  researches  (see  Mancia, 
2007)  say  that  the  first  memory,  from  neonatal  to  about  the  first  three‐four  years 
old,  is  the implicit one,  roughly localized  in the  subcortical areas, which is  not  of  a 
repressive  nature.  Indeed,  the  repressive contents  are due to the  action  of explicit 
memory,  which  takes  place  when  the  cortical  areas  are  well  developed,  since  its 
neural circuits are mostly localized there. The implicit memory has, then, essentially 
somatic‐emotive  origins  and  accomplishes  to  the  presymbolic  and  preverbal 
attitudes.  It  will  play  a  very  fundamental  role  in  the  next  psychic  evolution  of  the 
individual.  Finally,  take  into  account  the  cerebral  localization  both  of  the  visual 
stimuli and of the sensory‐motor ones.   
50 In this regard, we have the above‐mentioned embodied mathematics (see Lakoff & 
Núñez,  2000)  conception,  which  receives  further  validation  by  the  recent 
experimental work by the neuroscientist A. R. Damasio, according to whom somatic 
experiences  play  a  fundamental  role  in  the  formation  of  human  thought  and  its 
developments.  On the  other hand, all that  is coherent  with the  slow  maturation of 
the  nervous  reticular  system  which  inextricably  links  together  the  peripheral  and 
the central nervous systems (see Oliverio, 1982).  
component elements together with their meaning (semantics) in dependence on the reality
test (pragmatics). As is widely described above, during this corporal image formation the
agency Ideal Ego and the agency system Ego’s Ideal – Super-Ego are mainly involved
together with their psychodynamic mechanisms.
Further considerations on creativity and all that

On creativity: I.
According to Carotenuto (1991), creativity is mainly an Ego’s function. Such a creative
Ego’s function does not exclusively have a concrete character, that is to say, it does not
consist uniquely in the production of concrete objects, but instead it may act in various
other ways. The aims and objectives of libidinal drives are also shifted toward non-
personal objects which Phyllis Greenacre generically called collective alternatives (see
above section). Fossi (1983), starting from the previous work of Greenacre51 (1953, 1957,
1971), states that at the basis of creative thought lies the experience of childhood dismay
felt by a creative individual, during her or his own infancy, with a very special emotional
intensity.52 Such an experience would be related to the vision of a penis and with the
features of the Œdipus phase, so that we have another confirmation of what is suggested
in this paper. According to Greenacre, the psychosexual development of a creative person
is quite different from that of any other normal person, so that the contact points between
creative talent and neurotic or psychotic behaviour may exist, that is to say, such an
incomplete psychic development cannot exclude predispositions to dissociation
phenomena. In creative individuals, certain tendencies toward a precocious mysticism or
religious experiences have also been detected, sometimes with identifications with divine
figures, and this can again be explained by means of the disavowal mechanism because of
the mystic meaning that the fetish may have. The gifted child sublimates strong erotic and
aggressive instincts into a “loving affair with the world” of which he or she has an
exalted vision, so that the creative thing is meant to be like a loving gift. Creativity
expresses an endeavour to harmonize the external world (to which the individual
responds in a hypersensitive manner) with the internal one, to gratify the own narcissistic
needs and to overcome loneliness. According to Greenacre, the creative process does not
use neutralized energy and it does not represent a function of the Ego agency (as stated
above) free from conflicts. Instead, the creative mind often undergoes reactive formations
which may promote symbolization phenomena. The adult creative individual is subjected
51  Already  widely  mentioned  above.  En  passant,  following  Harley  and  Weil  (1990) 
and Scull and Schulkin (2009), we recall that Phyllis Greenacre (1894‐1989) was a 
notable American psychiatrist (with A. Meyer as advisor) and a psychoanalyst (with 
F.  Wittels  and  E.  Jacobson  as  supervisors),  in  friendship  with  E.  Kris  and  H. 
Hartmann,  who  made  important  clinical  and  theoretical  contributions  to  and 
insights  into  human  development,  to  psychoanalytic  training  and  therapy,  and  to 
creativity  and  fetishism.  In  particular, in the  early 1950s Greenacre  began  to  write 
on  fetishism, observing  that fetishists had an especially mutable bodily image. The 
notable  fact  that  descriptions  of  bodily  changes  were  central  to  the  works  both of 
the  writer,  mathematician  and  logician  Lewis  Carroll  and  of  the  writer  Jonathan 
Swift  led  to  the  psychoanalytic‐biographical  study  (Greenacre,  1955)  in  which  she 
made a psychodynamic study of the creative thought of these authors on the basis of 
her ideas on creativity and fetishism. 
52 See also Rycroft (1968a). 

to a continuous conflict, to an incomplete repression, to an unusual re-entry to childhood
fantasies, to great availability of non-neutralized libidinal and aggressive energetic
quantity. The latter continuously oscillates between primary and secondary processes,
although the creative activity is mainly the result of the primary process whose instinctual
energy is displaced as a cathexis object and aim through elaboration by secondary
process. Greenacre distinguishes between two possible main creative inspirations, the
oral one and the Œdipus one, the latter being related to the resolution modalities of the
Œdipus complex. Thus, also due to these last conclusions as well as to the different
available sets of collective alternates and to the greater or lesser degree of conscious or
preconscious attachment to the original object of libidinal drive, we have enough
elements for a possible explanation of the detected minor degree of creativity in women
compared to men. In Greenacre (1971), the author argues on some important studies
made by her on the nature of inspiration in relation to the phallic phase, which we have
already discussed in the previous section. In particular, she points out the importance
played by some significant screen memories and particular events that occurred during
the transition from the phallic to the Œdipus phase. In short, she reports some clinical
cases treated by her and related to gifted persons with a great imaginative component, all
joined by some recurrent common themes mainly linked to primary scenes, recounted as
screen memories, above all related to penis envy for females and to a general reverential
awe for penis, prodromal to later castration feelings. All the examined subjects showed a
great imagination, a sensual sensitivity to light, colours and nature, hence a deep interest
in and curiosity for the external world in which they look for the reflection of their
sentiments. According to Greenacre, the inspiration experiences of childhood (named
phallic experiences) are the prototype of any other inspiration. In any case, human
thought ever recalls the somatic or corporal experience which has created it, whose
physical sensations will be imaginatively projected in symbolic forms according to
modalities which are predisposed during the phallic and Œdipus phases. Furthermore,
Phyllis Greenacre detected a particular predisposition, above all amongst scientists, to a
sort of mystic relationship toward a God, mostly not related to that of religion,
representing that mysterious impulse that gives the creative force who they have.
Greenacre would want to bring back such a God to the father of the familiar romance (of
the Œdipus phase) as lived by the individual. All that, from the point of view of the
present paper, could also be linked to the symbolic role played by fetish in mythology
and religion, as briefly recalled in the previous section. In this regard, it is noteworthy to
recall the 1928 work Dostoevsky and Parricide in which Freud proposed interpreting the
hysteroepilepsy of the writer as being due to the strong anguish of his father’s threats.
According to Greenacre (1971), certain perverse characterial profiles are present above
all in creative personalities, often hidden behind forms of isolation.
On creativity: II
Creative thought, with the symbolic function as a result of the disavowal mechanism, has
strong instinctive needs that the external reality is not able to satisfy, differently from the
fetishist who instead finds, in a partial material object (fetish), a rough satisfaction with
them. So, the creative person turns her or his attention towards the fantasy world where
he or she finds a surrogate to the satisfaction of her or his own desires. Likewise to
neurotics and psychotics, the creative mind is cut out from the reality, but is different
from it because he or she may come back to the reality since this is not precluded from
him or her. This is explainable through the disavowal mechanism because this is mainly
based on the chief fact that a real fact (the awareness of gender sexual difference, namely
the detected lack of a female penis) is, however, always perceived but disavowed,
displacing such real but painful perception to the symbolic realm in normal cases,
whereas, in degenerate cases, it is displaced to a material fetish object. Again, following
Carotenuto (1991), the well-known writer Joseph Conrad seemed to have strong fetishist
problems according to a psychoanalytic biography written by Meyer (1967). According
to Eissler (1962; 1967), who made some interesting psychoanalytical remarks on
Leonardo da Vinci and his work in Meyer (1967), psychopathology is an indispensable
element for certain types of higher mental conquests; in this regard, see also Andreasen
(2008) and Janka (2004). Finally, as stated above, the remarkable work of Greenacre
(1955) is on two creative persons, the writer Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) and the
mathematician and writer Lewis Carroll (1832-1898). At the basis of their creative
thought, Greenacre identifies a disorder of bodily image, hence forms of fetishism. The
whole Part II of the fundamental treatise by Carotenuto (1991) is fully devoted to the
creative dimension of human thought, and most of what is reported there is easily
explainable through the simple psychodynamic model considered here and mainly based
on the disavowal mechanism. All this might turn out to be of a certain usefulness to
confirm what we suggest. In particular, we have widely made reference to the remarkable
work of Phyllis Greenacre. She began to be interested in perversions and creativity from
the 1950s. Her main idea is that fetishism is chiefly the outcome of an imperfect
development of the corporal image. She deepened fetishism in relation to Winnicott’s
transitional object theory, whereupon, Greenacre was naturally led towards creativity: as
she herself said, this interest in creativity was due to the influence of Ernst Kris and to her
previous work on fetishism. In that period, Greenacre was engaged in studying the
celebrated Lewis Carroll work Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, under the strong and
stimulating advice of Kris. To be precise, in studying fetishism and similar disorders, she
noticed the recurrent presence of sentiments of change of corporal image together with
tendencies to identify and personalize different parts of the body. At the same time,
Greenacre was also studying the above work of Carroll as well as Jonathan Swift’s
Gulliver’s Travels, finding confirmation of what she had noticed, namely that in fairy
tales and popular stories there were descriptions similar to the features of fetishism of
above, so that she began to study the biographies of these authors, which led her to the
basic work (Greenacre, 1955). In this way, fetishism and creativity met during the fruitful
and notable work of Phyllis Greenacre, a route also followed successfully by Chasseguet-
Smirgel (1985).
Conclusions
Finally, we summarize what points of this paper, from our point of view, deserve major
attention. On the basis of the fetishism pattern as explained by the last 1938 Freudian
thought, and taking into account the disavowal mechanism considered to be, d’après
Anna Freud and Laplanche and Pontalis (1973), a general psychic mechanism involved in
a basic Ego’s splitting which gives rise to two main subagencies (Ideal Ego and Ego’s
Ideal according to H. Numberg and D. Lagache), it is possible to reach the basis of the
first very basic symbolic functions by means of the separation of opposites operated by
the dialectic interaction between the above Ego’s subagencies.53 To be precise, it is the
53 These  two  Ego’s  subagencies  related  to  the  Ego’s  idealization  are  also  closely 
connected  with the  formation of primary  and secondary  narcissism, the first being 
related to Ideal Ego, the second to the system Ego’s Ideal – Super‐Ego. Therefore, the 
dialectic relation between all these Ego’s subagencies is connected with narcissism. 
dualistic interaction between the Ideal Ego subagency, mainly related to primary
narcissism, and the subagency system Ego’s Ideal – Super-Ego, mainly related to
secondary narcissism, that gives rise to that complex, interrelated and variegated realm of
non-conventional and conventional symbols. At the same time, starting from the Freudian
assumption of the polymorphous nature of a child (which might justify a kind of
ubiquitous nature of childish fetishism in infancy), this Ego’s splitting gives rise as well
both to symbolic and imaginative elaborations (as in normal cases, marking the passage
from nature to culture, including the language) or to degenerations (as in pathological
cases of paraphilia). These two alternatives are not completely disjunctive of each other,
but always in dialectic interaction between them, with a prevalence of one on the other. It
is also possible to understand symbolic or imaginative elaborations in a wider sense,
including too neuroses and psychoses, but whose relations with reality are quite different
from those related to the remaining normal forms of symbolic elaborations like those
involved in natural sciences. As recalled by Laplanche and Pontalis (1973), and as widely
mentioned above, the two different psychic attitudes resulting from the Ego’s splitting,
contrary and independent of each other, are at the foundation of the person’s
psychoanalytic theory itself. Furthermore, having to do with an intrasystemic Ego’s
splitting rather than with an agency splitting (for instance between Ego and Id), Freud
wished to stress a new psychic mechanism different from repression and negation.
Indeed, the main feature of this division process is just that it does not reach the
formation of a (synthetic) compromise between these opposite attitudes, but rather it
keeps or maintains both simultaneously without establishing between them any dialectic
relationships. In doing so, that is to say, in contemporaneously maintaining, at the same
level, opposite or contrasting tendencies or attitudes, it will be possible to have that
syncretic character,54 unifying and globalizing, that will allow a symbolic function, in
accordance with its original etymological meaning. As stated in Part 1, during the passage
from the anal phase to the phallic one, ambivalence gradually reaches its higher value in
the sense that, in it, the opposite tendencies lie at the same level, that is, they hold next to
one another, this being a characterizing element for symbolic formation. In any case, the
symbolic function would be closely related to the outcomes of the disavowal mechanism
and then ruled by the various qualitative and quantitative dialectic relationships between
these two Ego’s sub-agencies,55 established bit by bit during psychosexual development.
In particular, in doing so, it would be possible to provide some psychodynamic
motivation to mathematical symbolism in relation to natural science in the cognitive
model of G. Lakoff and R.E. Núñez, based on the notion of conceptual metaphor.
Furthermore, from what has been said in the paper, it is possible to put forward the
hypothesis according to which there may be a gender difference in the formation of
bodily image during the first four years of age, which, in turn, reflect different abilities in
visual-spatial skills that, as said, are of fundamental importance for mathematical
On  the  other  hand,  in  relation  to  what  has  been  pursued  in  this  paper,  the 
narcissistic  character  of  mathematicians  is  well  known,  since  K.  Weierstrass  and 
Novalis’s  semi‐philosophical  considerations  on  mathematics  (see  Dyck,  1960; 
Jahnke,  1991)  according  to  which  ‘’a  real  mathematician  is  an  enthusiast  per  se; 
without enthusiasm, there is no mathematics’’, as was well testified by Fine and Fine 
(1977). 
54 See Iurato (2012) and also Iurato (2013). 
55 Most human psychic functioning will be ruled by the basically dualistic interplay 
between the system Ego’s Ideal‐Super‐Ego subagencies and the Ideal Ego subagency 
with their relations with Id.  
attitudes, above all the algebraic-geometrical ones. On the other hand, for every creative
artist, no one moment of her or his life is more happy and rewarding than the one leading
to a discovery or invention thanks to which the artist may finally appease her or his
original castration anguish by means of this symbolic satisfaction, thereby refinding the
female penis lack. Finally, as we have said at the beginning of the first part of this paper,
the above-mentioned Ego’s splitting is also at the basis of the bodily image formation
with related phenomena (like transitional object phenomena, etc.) on which, in turn, the
first syntactic and semantic formations of human thought rely, prodromal patterns upon
which further relations between mathematics and physics will be moulded.
Acknowledgements
I wish first to thank Professor Antonella D’Amico of the Department of Psychology of
the University of Palermo for the very interesting discussions I had with her about
cognitive psychology aspects of mathematical thought. I’m also grateful to Professor
Mauro La Forgia of the Department of Psychology of the First University of Rome, as
well as to Dr. Valentina Cuccio of the Neuroscience Department of the University of
Parma, for kindly furnishing me with some of their interesting works. Finally, many
thanks to an anonymous referee whose invaluable remarks and hints have certainly been
important in improving and correcting many aspects of this paper.
Biography
Giuseppe Iurato was born in Ragusa, Italy, and studied Mathematics and Physics at
Bologna, Pisa and Catania, Italy. Presently, he is a PhD student in History and Science
Education at Palermo, Italy. His interests mainly regard general history and philosophy of
sciences, with particular attention to their foundations and possible relationships.

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Language and Psychoanalysis

Volume 2, Issue 2, 2013

Laura A. Cariola, Lancaster University, UK

Andrew Wilson, Lancaster University, UK

Editorial Advisory Board

Prof. Michael Buchholz, International Psychoanalytic University Berlin, Germany

Prof. Adrienne Harris, New York University, USA

Prof. Dianne Hunter, Trinity College, USA

Prof. Horst Kächele, International Psychoanalytic University Berlin, Germany

Prof. Henry (Zvi) Lothane, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, US

Prof. Ian Parker, Discourse Unit, UK

Prof. Riccardo Steiner, British Psychoanalytic Society, UK

Prof. Carlo Strenger, Tel Aviv University, Israel

Prof. Ruth Wodak, Lancaster University, UK

Editorial Contact Address:

Department of Linguistics and English Language

Lancaster LA1 4YT

E-mail: a.wilson@lancaster.ac.uk and l.cariola@lancaster.ac.uk

Peer Review Policy

Michael B. Buchholz, PhD. & Horst Kächele, PhD.

Jean-Marc Dewaele, PhD. & Beverely Costa, Phd.

Michael B. Buchholz & Horst Kächele1

For example an EPF working group identified 6 types of interventions psychoanalysts

understanding (Tuckett et al., 2008, p. 2)

Language and Psychoanalysis, 2013, 2 (2), 4-30 5

What psychoanalysis is begins to be defined in terms of what psychoanalysts do. To

Conversation – A core concept

Language and Psychoanalysis, 2013, 2 (2), 4-30 6

Why not speak of communication, but of Conversation?

In conversational activities there is more than the conveyance of information. The

Language and Psychoanalysis, 2013, 2 (2), 4-30 7

In contrast, a scientific conversation had completely different aims. Scientific questions

Freud´s use of the term “conversation” displays several connotations. To analyze

Language and Psychoanalysis, 2013, 2 (2), 4-30 8

To interprete a dream(-telling) as a “gift” constructs a metaphorical equation – by

Language and Psychoanalysis, 2013, 2 (2), 4-30 9

Language and Psychoanalysis, 2013, 2 (2), 4-30 10

“˜B[ig, [be)eautiful] from America’s [l]argest [cl[othier. [B)oh- Bond’s. Blondes, my

goodness. Wuh that’s a Freudian Slip” (quoted from Jefferson, 1996, p. 6)

Here is a second example from Jefferson:

Air California (p. 7)

Language and Psychoanalysis, 2013, 2 (2), 4-30 11

“Hi. I’m Carol’s sister - uh brother” (p. 10)

Senses and Embodiment

Language and Psychoanalysis, 2013, 2 (2), 4-30 12

(Schegloff, 2007, pp. 132-133).

Example (6) TG, 1 (Schegloff, 1979: #42)

Example (7) NB, #114 (Schegloff, 1979: #44)

Language and Psychoanalysis, 2013, 2 (2), 4-30 13

These examples display interesting dimensions of CA-research for psychoanalytic topics

Nobody would conclude that Schegloff’s observation of “pas de deux” in gaze-to-gaze-

Language and Psychoanalysis, 2013, 2 (2), 4-30 14

“Resistance” has been borrowed from psychoanalysis generating productive

Language and Psychoanalysis, 2013, 2 (2), 4-30 15

contradictions in the associated materials, pointed by the analyst, provide puzzles:

noteworthy, enigmatic issues calling for exploration and explanation. In a stepwise

interpretative statements that typically follow attend to these puzzles, providing

This trajectory is not a theoretical description but substantiated by a series of transcribed

Talk in Professional Psychoanalytic Practice

Language and Psychoanalysis, 2013, 2 (2), 4-30 16

Traditional domains of CA are medical communication, in court, in classrooms –

Language and Psychoanalysis, 2013, 2 (2), 4-30 17

displaying and recognizing the speaker’s communicative intentions…, in